Can Fortnite make plastic instruments cool again?

Let’s say you’re feeling nostalgic. You remember the good old days, when Rock Band’s plastic accouterments lined the living rooms of millions of highly coordinated video game fans. Sure, you could boot up Fortnite Festival and pay a few dollars for the privilege of keeping up with Selena Gomez’ ‘Single Soon.’ But you already own hundreds of songs in Rock Band, and somehow, watching Peter Griffin lip sync something out of the current top 40 doesn’t hit the same. Plus, you still have the old consoles that can play Rock Band 4, Harmonix’s last big rhythm game foray before the developer was gobbled up by Epic Games. Except, whoops, you got rid of all those fake instruments years ago.

You now have a few choices. Probably, you’re going to skip out on purchasing a brand new controller — they’ve become so rare that they are now more expensive than a PS5. You could spend hundreds of dollars on a used-but-tested Rock Band guitar via eBay, secure with the knowledge that the item still works. You could take a gamble and spend less on an untested guitar — but even here, you’re likely looking at over a hundred dollars to play a game you already own. Both options mean buying something old, so the chances of you needing to repair the equipment are more than zero. And while the parts that keep these controllers running smoothly aren’t that expensive, they’re not mass produced. The few DIY shops that sell Rock Band guitar parts and mods are likely already sold out. Never mind the hassle of opening up your controller, or the possibility that you might need to learn how to solder.

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All of this work, mind you, would be to play either the base game or expansions that you already own. The closure of online storefronts like the Xbox 360 marketplace alongside the delisting of digital-only expansions means that options are somewhat limited for new Rock Band players. Still, between an active modding community that maps its own custom songs and the game’s availability on modern platforms like the Xbox Series X, Rock Band 4 is somehow still kicking.

To this day, thousands of people still play Rock Band 4. Although precise numbers aren’t available, and the total is a far cry from the heyday of the iconic franchise, you could still theoretically find a handful of online lobbies at any given moment. Based on recent Reddit threads, it seems that there are always new people looking to form a squad dedicated to playing regularly. Recently, with the release of PDP’s Riffmaster — one of the only guitar peripherals released in the last decade — the number of available players has likely grown.

According to Billy Brisebois, who oversees global brand and product marketing at PDP, the peripheral was in development for over a year. During that time, PDP gathered feedback from people who were still playing Rock Band 4. The company, which was acquired by peripheral giant Turtle Beach earlier this year, didn’t know whether the controller would do well. What it did know was the RB4 community was a dedicated one. After all, PDP was also behind the only other guitar controller released in the last decade, a wireless peripheral that is currently retailing for over $400.

In early 2023, Epic Games reached out to PDP to give the company a heads up about the upcoming release of its music mode Fortnite Festival, reps tell Polygon. Obviously, the Fortnite audience is a gargantuan one. But part of the reason we haven’t seen a Rock Band 5 is that games of its ilk were so successful that the market became oversaturated with them. In a few short years, the world saw everything from a Beatles-focused Rock Band game to Metallica-centric Guitar Hero title. Fortnite’s success has long been tied to music culture, but even so, there was no guarantee that the new mode would be embraced by fans.

“It was just kind of [a] hope,” Maclean Marshall, senior PR director at Turtle Beach, tells Polygon.

“Fingers crossed, your hope is gonna pay off.”

With this in mind, it may come as a shock to hear that, despite costing $129, the Riffmaster is a hot commodity that regularly sells out within hours of availability. Some players say they’re buying several controllers, seemingly out of the excitement of finally having an accessible option that has some much-needed quality of life improvements. The new controller is collapsible, meaning that it takes up less space and is portable enough to survive the culls that happen when people downsize or move homes, for example.

PDP expects the demand will remain strong until the end of the year, though the popularity isn’t being driven exclusively by Rock Band 4 players. Several fans tell Polygon that they hop between Fortnite Festival and Rock Band 4, especially now that they have a fancy new controller to use.

Over the years, video games have seen a number of creative rhythm games such as Beat Saber and Melatonin — but none have achieved the success or party game status bequeathed to Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Fortnite Festival, which allows players to take up different instruments in a rock band, might be the closest thing we have to those experiences. Partially, that’s because the base game is free to play. Players can purchase individual songs, but the game also features a small rotation of songs available to everyone on a weekly basis. (Buying a song also lets players take up “jams” where they can mash together parts of a tune to make remixes with their friends.) This pricing model means that Fortnite Festival has a massive player base. The mode launched in December to the tune of 600,000 concurrent players. Amid a lackluster Fortnite season that’s almost over, that number has dropped considerably — but it’s still enormous compared to the user base that’s clinging to Rock Band 4. That, and the mode is still being supported by Harmonix, the studio that made Rock Band.

“Fortnite Festival was definitely a fun sleeper-agent-awakening moment for me,” Miguel Moran, a rhythm game devotee, tells Polygon. “I have friends who I’ve already convinced to dip into Fortnite for the regular battle royale mode and the battle-pass grind, and getting to drag those same friends into a quick Festival session and show off my Expert difficulty [Guitar Hero] skills muscle memory to them had me really excited and felt like a nice flashback to familiar moments of growing up with Guitar Hero and having my mom walk in on me shredding ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ and going ‘god, we gotta get you a real guitar!’”

Fortnite undeniably has the building blocks to create another music game renaissance, but having a smart mix of cool dance emotes, intriguing concerts, and the Harmonix pedigree may not be enough to bring it to fruition, even with the help of the Riffmaster. Anyone who invests in the Fortnite Festival ecosystem is arguably taking a gamble. How long will Fortnite retain its music licenses? If Fortnite Festival isn’t popular enough, will it meet the same fate as Fortnite’s original version, Save The World? Then there’s the question of pricing: Purchasing songs and the mode-specific Battle Pass in Fortnite Festival quickly add up.

“I’m a bit bummed that the cost [of songs] is more than double the original [Rockband] DLC prices and there’s no option to buy large packs for a discount,” says a player who goes by the moniker Indie Alpaca. “The limited setlist has also meant hearing the same songs over again; I actually refunded Seven Nation Army because EVERYONE I played with wanted to play that song and I was getting tired of it despite my love of The White Stripes.”

These are the types of growing pains inherent to any live service game, and in time, the kinks might be smoothed over. Until then, people still have a reason to break out their old Rock Band games.

“Even in 2024, we still break out RB3 for the ability to: karaoke, use up to 7 players, and use custom [songs],” Indie Alpaca says. While Fortnite Festival’s repertoire of songs expands regularly, the selection is largely oriented toward newer songs, or classic records with mass appeal.

“Customs also means quicker access to newer or niche songs that wouldn’t make it into Rock Band.”