To this day, I love getting together with my buddies and having a jam session in Rock Band 4. So when Epic Games announced Fortnite Festival, I was hyped. But upon finding out there wasn’t support for our plastic guitars and drums, not so much.
Luckily, Epic Games knows that there are plenty of would-be rockers out there just waiting to jam out in a new way. And the publisher confirmed that for the dozens of us, implementing peripheral support is a “priority.”
Within a Q&A style posting on the Fortnite website, the development team addressed several topics. When asked “Does Fortnite Festival support instrument controllers?” the development confirmed that compatibility isn’t available at launch. However, the team stated “it’s a priority for the team and currently under development. We’ll have more to share in 2024.”
Epic Games purchased Harmonix (the developers of the Rock Band series and several of the original Guitar Hero games) in November 2021. Fortnite Festival appears to be the lovechild of that marriage.
Harmonix was still an independent studio when they released Rock Band 4 in 2015. At the time, they partnered with Mad Catz to manufacture a fresh set of instruments for the series’ fourth installment. But production on those instruments ceased years ago, and now they’re very hard to find in the wild or extremely expensive to purchase used online.
Now that Harmonix is backed by a financial juggernaut like Epic Games, the big question is whether the publisher will manufacture a new set of peripherals to sell to fans. Otherwise, anyone who wants to purchase a second-hand guitar, drum set, or keyboard is likely to have to spend a pretty penny.
