In Depth: Rock Band 4's instruments won't reinvent the wheel, but they're darn cool

Page 1 - Intro and guitars

It's happening. After five years of dead air, Harmonix has recently revealed that Rock Band 4 is a real game and, better, that it's coming to Xbox One and PS4 this year.

And while in the past, a new game in the music genre meant buying a full new set of instruments, this time it doesn't.

"In fact," says Alex Verrey, head of global PR and communications director at Mad Catz (the company making the controllers for the new game), "you can use the same instruments from previous games or any of your kit from the Guitar Hero series."

"I can't promise Rock Band 4 will work with the new Guitar Hero Live instruments, but we'll try and make that happen too," Verrey said.

But doing this, he tells me, means missing out on the slew of upgrades the team at Mad Catz has been working on over the past year.

Everything from the neck of the guitar to the reactiveness of the drum kit is getting a makeover. And while you could go back to using the same equipment from the last generation, Verrey says the new series of guitars, microphones and drum kits make a compelling case to step up to the new plastic when the game comes out later this year.

Verrey started my demo with the neck of the guitar and the instantly recognizable five fret buttons. They're noticeably firmer than before and have ridges between the frets to help axe-men and women find their fingering more easily.

In the past, shaking the controller resulted in the buttons rattling back and forth in their enclosure. This time? They didn't budge. The firmness and rigidity of the frets are reminiscent of Guitar Hero's better guitar design, hinting that Mad Catz has done its homework on what worked well in the past.

Moving down from the five fret buttons, the bridge of the guitar – while not as stylish as the The Beatles: Rock Band controller – felt firmer.

"That's because there's more plastic around the body and bridge," said Dalin Cienfuegos, Regional Marketing Manager at Mad Catz. "Try twisting the neck of the guitar. We've doubled down on the build quality of the guitar."

And, twist as I might, the neck didn't give.

That played into Verrey and Cienfuegos's next point: the overall body of the controller is stronger and more resistant to cracking, thanks to the reinforced design.

"Inside the body [of the guitar] we've doubled the amount of plastic 'ribbing' so this has more plastic in there holding this together," Cienfuego said.

This change, while noticeable, isn't necessarily as impactful for casual players as it is for veteran electronic virtuosos, but the demonstration was an effective one.

Notice the small translucent sensor near the share button? Rock Band 3 owners will remember that this inconspicuous, light-detecting camera is used in combination with a built-in mic to calibrate the controller to different A/V setups.

For Rock Band 4, the team at Mad Catz revisited the calibration tools, making them smarter and more precise than in games past.

"Another problem with the older Rock Band controllers was that when you needed to activate Star Power, sometimes the guitar wouldn't register that it was upright. You would lose notes. You would drop notes. It would be incredibly frustrating," Verrey said.

"That's why, for this version of the controller, we've switched to a state-of-the-art digital sensor for Rock Band 4. It's much more accurate to a power of 100. It won't get stuck. It will work 100% of the time."

PAGE 2 - Drums, microphone and pre-order

For those who preferred a set of sticks to a five-fret guitar, the cymbals were a great addition to the Rock Band series.

Like its predecessor, cymbals are a completely optional add-on and not mandatory for a standard drum kit. Even better is that old cymbals – while not as ideal as the newer version – will still work without any modifications.

So then, what is changing with the three hi-hats?

"The original cymbals used an analog signal to pass input to the microcontroller unit (MCU) inside the drum kit. Because the MCU couldn't process analog signals, we needed to include an analog-to-digital converter inside the system causing a second of input lag."

Verrey continued, "We've made major improvements to the MCU that allow it to interpret analog signals natively and results in reduced lag time and improved the rate at which inputs are successfully registered."

TL;DR: Smarter cymbals mean you'll never miss a beat. Well, as long as you're doing it right.

While Verrey and Cienfuegos couldn't talk much about the game itself, they had plenty to say about what it's been like to work with its developer, Harmonix.

"Everyone who works at Harmonix is an actual musician," Verrey said. "They've all been in actual bands for years."

It's from this practical standpoint that Harmonix has worked closely with Mad Catz to ensure that the next generation of sound equipment is closer to true musician-grade instruments than ever before.

Rock Band 4's mic will sample at 48 kHz, about 4,000 Hz more than the industry standard 44.1 kHz that you find on most compact discs. Higher sampling rates means less clipping when the singer is belting out the lyrics and more accuracy when comparing your voice to the in-game audio.

As a long-time fan of the series, I appreciate the subtle changes. The guitar will look and feel more like the Guitar Hero 2 controller I've been using for the last eight years, with reinforced plastic to make it more durable, too.

I'd say more about Mad Catz's new drums and the mic, if I ever used them in previous games. I'm more of a one-trick pony when it comes to anything with notes, melodies or rhythm.

Overall, the changes are unobtrusive. They're not something you can see on the outside or as immediately obvious as Guitar Hero's switch to a three-fret, two-button system.

But that doesn't make the upgrades any less interesting. Just as Rock Band 4 will be an iterative improvement with gobs of polish and a few new features, so are these controllers. These changes alone might be enough to see the fervent masses of plastic-toting rock gods appear in droves. Hey, it's happened before.

"People are going to be very interested in the new hardware," Verrey said. "Harmonix CEO Steve Janiak went on record the other day saying that 'they can't guarantee hardware for everyone' on launch day unless they pre-order."

"The initial reaction to this was predictable. People said that we're just trying to ramp up the price or secure pre-orders, but we're not. When Rock Band 3 came out, there were parts of Europe where you couldn't find the hardware on day 1."

"But we're working overtime to make sure that doesn't happen again," Verrey said.

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