A couple of weeks ago Harmonix released its first virtual reality (VR) title Rock Band VR for Oculus Rift and Touch. Today the studio has announced the first DLC library which will be all Aerosmith songs.
Rock Band VR’s DLC Library will make its debut on April 12th with six tunes from rockers Aerosmith. The songs will be available for purchase through the Oculus Store for $2.99 USD per track. They are:
Aerosmith – “Angel”
Aerosmith – “Crazy”
Aerosmith – “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”
Aerosmith – “Janie’s Got A Gun”
Aerosmith – “Livin’ On The Edge”
Aerosmith – “Rag Doll”
The base videogame features 60 songs from well-known artists such as Avenged Sevenfold, blink-182, David Bowie, The Foo Fighters, Maroon 5 and Rage Against the Machine to name a few.
While you can download the title from the Oculus Store you’ll still need a compatible Rock Band 4 guitar controller. Currently these are PlayStation 3 Fender Stratocaster; PlayStation 4 Fender Stratocaster; PlayStation 4 Fender Jaguar; Xbox One Fender Stratocaster or the Xbox One Fender Jaguar.
As Harmonix releases further DLC content for Rock Band VR, VRFocus will bring you the latest updates.
It’s yet another busy week in VR gaming land with plenty of big new releases and some updates on some of our most anticipated titles. Read on for the latest news on what’s coming to the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR.
We got a look at one of our most anticipated Rift games, Wilson’s Heart, this week ahead of its launch later this month. On the PSVR side, we checked out Ancient Amuletor, which brings tower defence to the headset. Meanwhile at EGX Rezzed in the UK we saw a strange new multiplayer VR game where you swat away bees while cooking food. Because why not? Also, make sure not to miss our impressions of the excellent Frontier VR.
Reviews
Lots of games were subject to our reviewing wrath this week and overall the results were pretty good. Fated’s PSVR version proved to be well worth picking up for fans of the headset. Narcosis, meanwhile, had a decent stab at VR horror with a gamepad, but came up a little short. The same is true of Giant Cop, which is a great tech demo but still little else.
Releases
There’s plenty of big stuff on each platform this week. If you’re a PSVR user then make sure to check out Fated: The Silent Oath and Korix. Rift users, meanwhile might find some fun in Giant Cop, while Vive users can enjoy the latest game from Phaser Lock, Twisted Arrow.
As always, for all releases you can check out our full Rift, Vive and PSVR lists.
The world of videogame development can often be a turbulent one, with studios hiring and firing staff when big projects begin then end. This week Rock Band VR developer Harmonix has announced its had to reduce its staff, laying off 17 employees.
In a statement to GamesIndustry.bizthe studio said: “Today we made the difficult decision to say goodbye to 17 talented people as we restructured to align with our current and anticipated development needs. These people all played a role in making Harmonix and its games what they are today and we are more than grateful for their contributions. We are working to ensure that they are taken care of as we make this change.”
While there was no confirmation if these redundancies were related to the studio’s VR project’s, recent months have seen other developers reduce their team size or close completely. In September last year Sony London Studio, which created The London Heist for PlayStation VR, announced ‘a number of compulsory redundancies‘. Then in January, Guerrilla Cambridge which had been in operation for 19 years and most recently released RIGS: Mechanised Combat League for PlayStation VR announced its closure.
Harmonix released Rock Band VR last week for Oculus Rift and Touch. Its currently in the process of developing SingSpacefor Samsung Gear VR which VRFocus demoed at the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2017.
VRFocuswill continue its coverage of Harmonix, reporting back with any further updates.
Last week Oculus released its latest Studios title, Rock Band VR, bringing the dream of being a rock star into many people’s living rooms. Following its release however, developer Harmonix has been hit with lay offs.
The studio is letting go of 17 staff, it’s confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz. The company noted that this was in an effort to “align with our current and anticipated development needs.” We’ve reached out to Harmonix to confirm the news and ask if any of the Rock Band VR developers were affected.
“These people all played a role in making Harmonix and its games what they are today and we are more than grateful for their contributions,” a statement reads. “We are working to ensure that they are taken care of as we make this change.”
Lay offs at game developers are common after the release of a project as a team downsizes before moving onto another project or continuing to work on downloadable content (DLC), which Rock Band VR will be getting. Harmonix still has more VR in the works; virtual karaoke game SingSpace is slated to appear on Gear VR later this year, and the studio also released Harmonix Music VR as a PlayStation VR launch title. Recently the studio also announced a new physical music game, DropMix.
We gave Rock Band VR 7/10 in our review. It was the first VR game to attached a tracked object to a real world object to create a brand new accessory. Games Editor David Jagneaux rocked out, but ultimately missed some elements of the previous games. “The Classic Mode is merely a shell of its former self, but the new VR features establish a more immersive way of playing the game than ever before,” he wrote. “It’s lacking in a few areas, but the core of it all is too fun to ignore.”
Last week Rock Band VR released exclusive for the Oculus Rift with Touch. The long-running franchise has been around for years and led to countless plastic-instrument wielding families around the world to live out their rock star fantasies from the comfort and shelter of their living rooms. Now, that dream is extended into the immersive landscape of VR with a new Freestyle Mode and single player only affair that delivers on the promise of transporting players onto the stage like never before.
It has its issues, but we were more impressed than expected with the series’ debut in VR. You can read our review for more on that game.
Now this week we’ve got Guitar Godz VR, an indie Kickstarter project from Kahn Jekarl that’s aimed at not only the Oculus Rift, but HTC Vive and PlayStation VR (PSVR) headsets as well. You won’t be able to see the guitar when you look down, but the note highway is attached to your head movement so no matter where you’re looking, you can always see the notes cascading into your line of sight.
On the one hand this limits the immersion since you don’t feel as much a part of the world without an articulated peripheral to look down and interact with, but at the same time you get the classic note highway without losing the view of the crowd — something Rock Band VR’s Classic Mode currently lacks. In fact, in Guitar Godz VR, players will even be able to watch actual real concert footage while playing, not just animated characters, lending a degree of flexibility we haven’t seen in these sorts of games yet. Rock Band has always been animated only and Guitar Hero Live went the full live action only route.
According to the Kickstarter pitch, the team working on the project has members of the former Rock Band team at Harmonix, as well as developers that have worked on projects like the Call of Duty franchise, GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption, Bioshock, and more. That’s a good sign for whether they have the talent to pull this off and also helps explain the realistic, albeit large, targeted budget of $500,000.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Guitar Godz VR is that unlike with Rock Band VR a peripheral device isn’t necessary. You can still hook up your guitars that you’ve got laying around and play that way — it’s probably the best way to play — but if you’ve only got Vive wands, PS Move controllers, or Oculus Touch controllers, then you can still enjoy the game. It’s a little unclear how that works in the video, so we reached out to Jekarl for more information:
“For the PSVR Move controllers, while there are enough buttons on one Move controller to support all five frets, we found it’s better to spread the frets across the two move controllers. The complexity lies in hitting multi-button chords. We’ve found a layout which allows players to hit all two-button chord combinations and most three-button chords. Currently, you just strum the right Move controller up and down to register a strum.
The HTC Vive controller is similar to the move in that we spread the five buttons across the 2 controllers, with the right controller used for strumming.
The Oculus Touch controllers are actually the easiest, as you can put all five buttons on the left controller since the thumbstick is also a button. We may settle on also having the 5th fret on the right controller as well, to give options to players.”
While you don’t get to see any high-level gameplay in the trailer above, Jekarl assures me they will have the traditional Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert curve with plenty of songs that even the development team have trouble getting 100% completion on in Expert difficulties.
Obviously, one of the most important aspects of any music game is the track list and while the team isn’t ready to divulge any specifics due to ongoing licensing discussions, it sounds promising. “We’re not discussing specific songs just yet, but if you think of the biggest artists in rock history, that’s who we’re bringing in,” said Jekarl. “Stars of the British Invasion in the 60’s, the psychedelic rock of the 70’s, the big hair bands of the 80’s, the grunge rock of the 90’s up to the modern day, those are the types of bands and songs we want in GuitarGodz VR.”
From the looks of it, Guitar Godz VR is aiming to be a much more faithful recreation of the music genre in VR than even Rock Band VR is. For PSVR users, Jekarl even explains that the non-VR user will be able to play bass alongside the VR guitar player with a guitar controller, bringing an element of local multiplayer into the mix. No other instruments are planned at this time, so drummers and vocalists have to sit this one out as well.
The road to half a million dollars is long, but Guitar Godz VR certainly looks promising enough. If the team fails, Jekarl tells me they’ve spoken with investors that will hopefully help make the game a reality. It’s currently slated for a November 2017 release date, which likely means the bulk of the funds are for licensing agreements since development seems to already be quite far along.
Does this look like the kind of music game you’d play in VR? Which headset would you be interested in playing this on? Let us know in the comments below!
If you’ve been putting off purchasing Oculus Touch for your Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD) Microsoft might just have an enticing deal for you. For a limited time, if you order the motion controllers through the Microsoft Store you’ll get Rock Band VR for free.
Continuing Oculus and Microsoft’s long term collaboration, the latter made the promotional announcement today enabling those that buy the controllers online or in store to receive the newly released title completely free. This offer isn’t available forever, it is limited. You’ve got until 5th April or while supplies last to grab yourself a copy.
Harmonix released Rock Band VR last week exclusively for Oculus Rift and Touch for $49.99 USD/£39.99 GBP. 60 songs feature including bands like Avenged Sevenfold, blink-182, David Bowie, The Foo Fighters, Maroon 5 and Rage Against the Machine.
Alongside the announcement Microsoft also revealed four new virtual reality (VR) videogame demos would feature at its brick and mortar stores. These are: Rock Band VR, Fruit Ninja VR, Lumiere’s Dress Rehearsaland Robo Recall. Demos are free, with no appointment needed, but those under 18 – minimum age is 13 – will need parental consent.
Oculus Touch saw a worldwide launch in December, pricing the controllers at $199/£189. Then at the start of this month Oculus made the surprise announcement that the device would now be half the cost, dropping to $99. Expecting a backlash from those that had recently purchased, Oculus issued a $50 store credit for users to put against any software they may want.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Rock Band VR and Harmonix, reporting back with further updates.
Thanks to Harmonix it’s time to rock out once again, this time in virtual reality (VR) with Rock Band VR on Oculus Rift. Pick up your guitar and rock out to a mix of classic hits from down the years and modern day rock masterpieces. There’s a variety of different game modes too. Including the classic gameplay synonymous with the series and a campaign mode to chart your rise to greatness.
But what exactly do you need to virtually become the next big thing of the music scene? And once you’ve got that how do you set it all up?
Well, you’ll be needing the Oculus kit, the game, and a guitar:
Acquire an Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch.
At the time of writing Rock Band VR is an Oculus exclusive title and for that you will need not just an Oculus Rift but an Oculus Touch as well. The Ouclus Touch will not be held by you through play except for navigation purposes and is actually fastened to the head of the guitar. More on this shortly.You can of course acquire both the Oculus Rift and Touch from a variety of technology stores on the high street and online.
Choose your instrument.
It’s time to pick your musical weapon, and there are five to choose from that Rock Band VR supports. Three for the PlayStation brand and two primarily for XBOX One. Compatible controllers can be found online at the likes of Amazon.
The PlayStation 3 Fender Stratocaster
Previously associated with Rock Band 3 and available in the classic Cherry and Black colour schemes, as well as Blue. Requires Bluetooth.
The PlayStation 4 Fender Stratocaster
Previously associated with Rock Band 4 and can be found in the classic Cherry and Black colour schemes, as well as White with a Black interior. Also requires Bluetooth.
The PlayStation 4 Fender Jaguar
Previously associated with Rock Band 4 Rivals and can be found in a Dark Red with a Black or White interior, as well as in Blue with a Black interior. Like it’s fellow PlayStation guitars it requires Bluetooth
The XBOX One 4 Fender Stratocaster
Previously associated with Rock Band 4 and can be found in Black with a White interior, as well as White with a Black interior. It will requires you to have Windows 10 Anniversary Edition installed on your PC.
The XBOX One Fender Jaguar
Previously associated with Rock Band 4 Rivals and can be found in Dark Red with a White interior, Charcoal Grey, as well as in Blue with a Black interior. It will requires you to have Windows 10 Anniversary Edition installed on your PC.
3. Acquire the game.
You can do this from the Oculus Store, where the the game is priced at £39.99 (GBP) at the time of writing. However you can also acquire a RockBand VR bundle on Amazon where you can purchase both the game and a peripheral. You can also choose whether you would prefer an Xbox One or PlayStation VR guitar controller Although your choice of guitar appears to be the black and white Stratocaster only.
If you’d like to see what the box contains you can watch an unboxing of the Stratocaster from VR Community member ‘Ray OfMinneapolis’ here.
4. Connect Your Fender Controller with Oculus Touch
If you own an Oculus Touch you should already have a necessary component for playing RockBand VR, the Rock Band VR Connector. Essentially a clip enabling the Touch to be added to the guitar which is tapped to the back of the guitar head.
Helpfully, Oculus has chosen to produce a video so you can see it in action. You can find that below.
After that and with your game installed you’re all set up. Go out and prove you are the best!
Sometimes you don’t realise quite how big of a week it’s been until you sit back and take a look. We got updates on a lot of major VR projects this week, and there were some big releases and surprising new reveals too. Dig in.
After a long wait, we finally know when Other Ocean’s hugely anticipated VR debut, Giant Cop, will be releasing: March 30th on Rift. Look for Vive and PSVR versions to follow on after. Sticking with PSVR, we got a date for Jeff Minter’s first VR game, Polybius, which hits on April 28th. The PSVR version of Fated: The Silent Oath will be here next week too.
Hands-on
The week kicked off with a deeper look at what Gunfire Games had brought from its previous VR titles into its newest Rift exclusive, From Other Suns. We also got a glimpse at the surprising new release of a Ghostbusters VR game, the next entry in the Viral series, and Blade & Soul. You definitely shouldn’t miss our hands-on with Downward Spiral, though, this is a surprisingly compelling adventure.
Reviews
Rock Band VR is the big review of the week, while we also went in-depth on a beautiful new adventure in Waking the Glares, and updated our review on Drop Dead now that it’s on Touch.
Releases
PlayStation VR got a Ghostbusters game out of the blue this week, but we knew the Rock Band VR was coming for a long time. Over on Vive, there’s the usually flood of new apps to check out but don’t miss Obduction.
As always, for all releases you can check out our full Rift, Vive and PSVR lists.
The developers at Harmonix didn’t set out to create an open-ended music creativity tool with Rock Band VR, but once they realized how compelling it was to simulate the feeling of being a rock star on stage in VR, then they completely pivoted the production of their game. They discovered that it wasn’t as gripping in VR to force users to focus on any single gameplay mechanic, and so they focused on allowing users to look around to cultivate deep feelings of immersion and stage presence.
Now available on the Oculus Rift and Touch, Rock Band VR brings players into their rockstar fantasy by using the Rock Band VR adapter to attach a Touch controller to make the guitar part of the VR world, and then puts players in the spotlight. But, unlike prior Rock Band games, the playing mechanics are focused on freedom of creation rather than a prescribed track of notes:
Rather than rewarding precision of playing the perfect studio session, they wanted to recreate what it felt like to give a live musical performance that allowed users a lot of agency in expressing their own musical creativity and giving an entertaining embodied performance. I had a chance to catch up with Jonathan Pardo, QA Audio Lead for Rock Band VR, to talk about their design process of how they were able to incrementally teach players how to play their game as well as some of the fundamental components of music theory for what chord combinations tend to work well within their set of 60 different songs.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
One of the most impressive things about Rock Band VR is that they’ve actually recorded live guitar sounds of every chord type and rhythm with the proper guitar sounds for all 60 of their songs. This means that you can push a few buttons while strumming and have it sound like you’re playing the proper chords within the context of playing within a band. There are seven different chords with the following finger combinations: Single notes (1), Muted Power Chord (1,2), Bar Chord (1,2,3), Power Chord (1,3), Muted Arpeggio (1,2,4), Arpeggio (1,3,4), & Octave (1,4).
Harmonix realized that the most immersive experience would be to not have any artificial gameplay visualization, but this mode would be virtually impossible for anyone to organically figure out how to play the game if they weren’t a game developer or professional musician. So the created a Performance Mode with more instructions and guidelines. The Virtuoso Mode can be unlocked after a tutorial, and provides more explicit chord following to help train your muscle memory and understand some of what chord combinations work well together. Then the goal is to eventually be able to play the Monster Mode, which is the most immersive since there isn’t any gameplay visualizations happening but you have to know all of the music theory and listen to the band and follow along, much like a real musician would have to do in a live performance.
Fans of the original Rock Band gameplay will be happy to hear that they’ve also included a Classic Mode that can be played in VR:
Harmonix has a lot of musicians who have played a lot of live shows, and so they’ve created 15 different environments in order to simulate what it feels like to play on stage in front of a wide range of audience sizes and contexts. They change how it sounds in each environment and have different pedals to modulate the sound that are activated by looking at the pedal and using your whammy bar.
Even if you don’t want to learn and play all of the different chord combinations, Pardo says that there are other things that you can do in order to earn points by doing an embodied performance that cultivates your sense of stage presence that include things like turning the guitar upright, getting on your knees, doing a head bang, or jumping up and down.
Adding more social features is a top priority for Harmonix, but there are various network latency challenges that will make it difficult to synchronize live performances. Pardo says that they often will hold back on features if they know that it’ll make a worse networked gameplay experience, and that there are some features like live streaming of the audio that previous console versions of Rock Band disable due to sync problems due to latency. They’re actively exploring network workaround solutions as well as how to track other instruments, but these challenges explain why Rock Band VR is only launching with single-player guitar support.
While Harmonix didn’t originally set out to create a live performance simulator emulating what it feels like to be a rock star, the unique affordances of VR slowly led them down this path. Pardo says they kind of accidentally created a music creativity tool, and that it was more about designing a game to be fully embodied and present in the moment on stage rather than the type of precision that you’d want if you were in the recording studio. The game play is not easy, but neither is being able to play music. Musicians should have an advantage in learning to play Rock Band VR, and it will be exciting to how games like Rock Band VR will help train and inspire gamers into learning how to play actual instruments.
You can learn more about the release of Rock Band VR and the compatible guitar controllers in this Oculus blog post.
Strap yourself in; it’s Rock Band VR week on the Oculus Store. Harmonix’s long-anticipated rock sim is finally ready for you. There’s also another pretty good zombie shooter and a whole heap of stuff to look forward to on Gear VR this week.
Oculus Studios’ second big game of the month is the rebirth of Harmonix’s beloved Rock Band franchise inside the Rift. Strap a Touch controller to a plastic guitar and then live out your rock fantasies on stage to over 60 tracks.
Recommendation: Series die-hards might be disappointed with an abbreviated Classic Mode, but there’s still a lot to love here. Read our full review.
Drop Dead, from Pixel Toys
Price: $19.99 (Rift)
Gear VR’s zombie shooter makes its way over to the Rift with Touch support. Drop Dead has you slaying legions of the undead in an attempt to stop the evil Dr. Monday and save the world. Zombie cure not included.
Recommendation: If you need to shoot something this week, this is your best bet. Read our full review.
V-Aria, from V-Aria
Price: $3.99 (Gear)
This uses your music to create immersive visualization experiences that, according to the developer “challenges your perceptions of space and time.” That sounds pretty heavy for a music visualizer. It works with mp3s on your phone or just by listening to the music around you from speakers.
Recommendation: If you need to see your music in front of you, scoop this up.
Drone Defence, from Chingis
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
The drones have turned and they’re coming to get you. Blast away the buzzing nuisances from the comfort of your sunny backyard using the Gear VR’s touchpad.
Recommendation: Not the most original idea. Pass.
Chicken Go, from HashVR
Price: Free (Gear)
If you guessed that Chicken Go was a Frogger clone that didn’t really look like it had much business being inside VR then, congratulations, you’re a winner. Hop across busy roads and lava rivers on your path to safety.
Recommendation: Skip it.
Realmcraft, from Tellurion Mobile
Price: $0.99 (Gear)
Apparently ripping off Minecraft is still a potential revenue stream for developers. Most Mojang clones have at least something to their name but this looks almost exactly like the original game visually, with fewer features. Minecraft is also already out on Gear VR so you should just pick that up instead.
Recommendation: Avoid.
The Caterer, from Illusive Creations
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
I’d quite like to see the manic cooking genre brought over to VR as a co-op experience more often. Sadly, The Caterer doesn’t quite look like it’s worth digging into.
Recommendation: Pass on this one.
Skydiver, from StarConsult
Price: $1.99 (Gear)
Pretty self-explanatory; jump in a plane, take off, and then jump out. As far as these types of experiences go, Skydiver looks well produced. Be careful if you get sick easily, though.
Recommendation: Thrill seekers only.
The Drowning Dungeons, from Savage Cabbage Software
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
A little horror creeps its way onto Gear VR this week. Drowning Dungeons looks a little like Dreadhalls, but if you need a new way to scare yourself then it could be worth checking out.
Recommendation: For those in need of frights.
Futuristic Flying Car, from Extremesoft
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
Flying cars might not be here yet, but Extremesoft wants to make up for that with its own take on what they’ll be like in VR. Graphically this is pretty blurry, though. Hopefully the future doesn’t look like that.
Recommendation: Pass.
New Oculus Rift Releases on Steam
Boofle’s Home, from Eden Agency
Price: Free (Rift)
Boofle’s Home is an experience where a repaired stuffed heirloom has come to life and the loveable Boofle has a space where you to engage in a collection of activities. You can also choose from various cards and gift collections to create a Boofle card for different occasions.
Recommendation: A free and fun getaway that’s family friendly. Grab it!
Weelco, from weelco_vr
Price: Free (Rift)
Weelco is a tool for users to watch, upload, and share 360-degree videos. It includes a speech search with multi-language support and a user friendly interface.
Recommendation: Grab this and put it up against the other video app released this week. See what you enjoy more.
Storm VR, from TeamStormVR, Anrick, UNIT9
Price: $1.99 (Rift)
Storm VR is an introduction to a series that plans to put you through various survival sequences within different types of storms. This intro has you waking up in an intense snowstorm and you must find shelter before freezing to death.
Recommendation: This passion project shows a lot of promise and it could be worth it to invest and support the planned 5 episodes.
EmbodyMe, from Paneo, Inc.
Price: Free To Play (Rift)
EmbodyMe lets users play around with holograms created using a single photo and communicate using them in a social environment. Prepare for an influx of celebrities and fictional characters to take selfies with!
Recommendation: A social experience that introduces a unique feature that could help it stand out. Check it.
Vine Video, from HTC Creative Labs
Price: Free To Play
Vive Video is an app that gives you an immersive space to watch 3D, 180-degree, and 360-degree videos. HTC’s Creative Labs have made the controls for this experience as intuitive as possible as you resize and orient the screen with your VR controllers.
Recommendation: Definitely worth the shot for free. See if lines up with other video players you likely have in your library.
McOsu, from McKay
Price: Free
McOsu is an open-source, circle clicking rhythm game that’s essentially a third party practice client based on the game osu!
Recommendation: Rough around the edges, but if you’re interested in osu! give it a shot.
The developers at 