Harmonix: Rock Band can go on and on

There are plenty of new places to take the Rock Band franchise in the next five years, developer Harmonix has insisted.

Rock Band 3, due later this year, adds a keyboard but that's not the end of the road for the series. CEO Alex Rigopulos told Edge that the studio is only scratching the surface.

"There's a lot of creative terrain to explore with Rock Band: new forms of interaction between the player and the music. We still have some very exciting things planned."

Bring on the 21-stringed Malian kora, we say.

Sales of music games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero plummeted a whopping 46 per cent in the US last year, prompting talk that the two franchises were played out.

Rigopulos also hinted at an impending return to two of the studio's earliest games – PlayStation 2 titles Frequency and the excellent Amplitude.

"We loved those games and of course have been focused on other areas in recent years. Rock Band's been focused on rock music, Dance Central has the luxury of focusing on all kinds of other music, but in terms of rhythm-action-type games focused on electronica, that's something we'd love to come back to at the right moment in time. Or something completely new focused on that style of music."

Rock Band 3 arrives on DS, PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 29th October.