Harmonix will return to Rock Band 'at the right point in time,' says CEO

Harmonix will eventually return to Rock Band, but whatever the studio does will differ from the franchise's existing games, said Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos in an interview with GamesBeat.

When asked if it was difficult to leave behind Harmonix's long-running Rock Band and Dance Central franchises for the company's next game, the Kinect-exclusive music interaction title Fantasia: Music Evolved, Rigopulos said he's excited to do something new, but added that the studio isn't forgetting about Rock Band.

"We don't view Rock Band as something that's being left behind," said Rigopulos. "It's something we'll return to at the right point in time and reimagine it as appropriate for its time."

Rigopulos also pointed out that the cyclical nature of the music-game genre mirrors the music industry itself, saying that "music is undergoing constant reinvention."

Harmonix's last standard Rock Band game was Rock Band 3, which was released in October 2010; the most recent entry in the series was the downloadable spin-off title Rock Band Blitz, which launched last August on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

This past April, Harmonix ended its consistent schedule of five and a half straight years of weekly downloadable song releases for Rock Band with Don McLean's "American Pie," although the studio didn't completely rule out future DLC releases. The company's PAX East 2013 panel served as a retrospective coda for the Rock Band franchise.

Fantasia: Music Evolved is in development on Kinect for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. You can read our full preview here.