Rock Band 4 For PC Scrapped As Funding Campaign Falls Short
Bad news, folks. Harmonix has scrapped plans to bring Rock Band 4 to PC (for now, at least) due to the funding campaign's failure to meet its goal. The developer had sought funding on Fig, where it had a goal of $1.5 million with plans to contribute the other needed $500,000 itself if the campaign was fully funded. As of yesterday's deadline, Harmonix has raised about half its goal at $792,000, and it says it won't be proceeding as a result.
It's sad news for those who backed the campaign and were pining for a Windows release. As with many crowdfunding campaigns, though, it is just the nature of things and it'll mark the end of this effort. Rock Band 4 had proven popular on consoles, and so Harmonix tossed up the campaign to get the funding it needed, but also to gauge whether there was enough interest to bother with the plan.
Unfortunately, failure to meet the goal means there isn't enough interest for Harmonix to proceed regardless of the campaign's failure. In a statement today, the company said:
How do we feel about the end of the campaign? Disappointed, obviously ... But at the same time we learned exactly what we needed to learn: there doesn't seem to be enough of an audience to make Rock band for PC a viable project for us right now ... as an independent developer we have to be careful about how much money and development time we risk on a project we're not sure has a big enough audience, and crowdfunding allowed us to (among other things) judge the market fit for Rock Band PC.
Not surprisingly, backers have had a lot to say and just about as many questions, and so Harmonix has included a bunch of FAQ with its statement. Among them is a statement addressing criticism about the $1.5 million funding goal — "that's insane!" according to some backers.
Harmonix disagrees, saying that "it's not a simple matter of flipping a compiler switch and building the game for the PC," and that the funding amount is entirely reasonable. As well, Harmonix has been criticized for what some feel was an inadequate amount of advertisement for the campaign. In response, Harmonix says that it "felt a big marketing would have been better spent helping to fund development."
SOURCE: Fig