Harmonix: Future Rock Band titles to be "a pretty dramatic departure," from previous releases

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos has said the company is in the process of considering "a pretty dramatic departure," for future iterations of its Rock Band label.

Speaking in an interview with Giant Bomb, Rigopulos said while the DLC portion of Rock Band 3 "continues to be a profitable business," when it comes to the franchise's future, the next installment might be "a pretty dramatic departure," from what has been released in the past.

"In the short term, we're basically continuing to attend to that business as we have been," he said. "In the longer term, looking into next year, we're actually considering fairly fundamental creative reinterpretation of what the Rock Band business is. We're committed to the franchise, but when I think that when we do things with it in the future, it's going to be a pretty dramatic departure from what we've done before."

"We do have plans on where we're going to go with Rock Band and how we plan to expand it," added co-founder and CTO Eran Egozy. "All I'll say for now is that it isn't what you think. You might assume we're going to add saxophone or something along those lines, but no, the kind of direction we're planning on taking Rock Band, the kind of innovation we have in mind, is taking it in a different direction, one that's more suitable to the kind of environment we're in, what people are doing now, what they're interested in playing now, versus, say, 2007."

"It's more than ideas. We are working on it, and we have forward progress. It's an exciting, fresh take on it. I'll leave it at that."

Tracks from White Zombie, its frontman Rob, The Darkness land on PSN and XBL this week in the usual update.