Rock Band 4's PC port died somewhere around the halfway mark of its crowdfunding goal. Harmonix isn't ruling out a PC port of Rock Band 4, but it's taking this failed Fig campaign as a sign that the game should be tabled for now.
Harmonix was seeking $1.5 million in crowdfunding to kickstart development of a PC port of Rock Band 4, but the campaign only managed to attract $792,817 in pledges and investments. That's 52 percent of its goal, just barely on the far side of the halfway mark.
The studio updated the game's Fig campaign to debrief backers, both those who backed the game financially and those who just cheered it on.
Harmonix's staff was exciting about reviving Rock Band Network and widening the franchise's reach, but now they feel "disappointed, obviously," the company said.
"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," said Harmonix. "We're committed to supporting and improving RB4 on consoles."
Harmonix was willing to put up $500,000 of its own money to push the PC port forward. For those wondering why the company, which made a lot of money off of the Rock Band franchise, was asking for crowdfunding, the company points out that it is no longer in MTV/Viacom's stable.
As an independent studio, the company didn't have the resources to pursue a PC port of the game without funds from the crowd, according to Harmonix. That was why a PC port didn't launch alongside the console release of the game last fall and also why the studio started the Fig campaign.
The best launch date for a PC port would have been on Oct. 6, 2015, which Rock Band 4 landed on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The second best date, considering the studio's circumstances as an independent company, would have been when the console gets a "major feature update" this fall.
"To that end, we started working on this crowdfunding campaign almost immediately after RB4 launched, and it took us nearly three months of scoping and research to make sure we understood what we were building (including a great deal of thinking about how [Rock Band Network] would work using the Steam Workshop)," said Harmonix in its crowdfunding campaign.
