I think they totally dropped the ball on Rocksmith+, even with all the latest improvements. Makes sense to delist this game, but Rocksmith+ is filling a totally different void than rocksmith 2014. I personally LIKE the focus on teaching (since Im a noob), but that was not what the community that kept the game alive wanted.
I don't have a way to solve Rocksmith+ issues, and I do think their solution to custom songs is reasonable (they license songs in bulk and then the community can make arrangements) since they are at already 8000 songs and fulfilling their side of the deal. But since they "betrayed" their core community that was making the custom arrangements, they shot themselves in the foot. Now the game is in a really weird place.
I just wish there was a different path than what we got. Probably making the price WAY lower for people that create content would have pleased some people?
CJCW? you seem to be a bigger fan than me, what would you have done with a Rocksmith 2? Taking into account you have to do something to stop CDLC (since it's obviously illegal)
Not that guy but the subscription service really was inevitable- not only from the Ubisoft side (of course they want more money), but from the licensing side as well. Licensing content for direct releases worldwide has become incredibly painful (anecdotal readings from Harmonix and Rocksmith devs/people close to them), and the entire music industry has moved to streaming, so that model makes more sense.
Not only that, but the studio needed to move off of Gamebryo as well, which IIRC shut down effectively right after RS2014 came out, so a move to an internal Ubi engine needed to happen.
I've heard *rumblings*, but nothing really confirmed anywhere, that the sub service is pared down in functionality in order to satisfy the agreements with the labels (so no Guitarcade or Session Mode, for example) but that 100% could be me talking out of my ass. Multiplayer missing really sucks but... again, streaming service, I'm sure they want that second sub.
As far as another game goes... it's really difficult. In 2013 we also got BandFuse, which had master stems, tabs, four players, and vocals. Vocals would be the easiest thing to add to the game; IIRC they were actually fully charted in RS1, but we never got the functionality. Four player mode would be nice, especially as RS+ natively supports tab right now. There's also whispers that the game will support keyboard, and Ubisoft has been hiring for the role, but nothing concrete on that yet.
Guitarcade and Session Mode, while cool, really never became popular in the entire lifespan of 2014 so I'm not entirely surprised to see them not here, nor am I completely convinced they'll come back. Seems like a lot of investment, especially when in 2014 Ubi SF had another studio (Red Storm?) do them.
Asynchronous online multiplayer would be great but that would be a huge, huge server cost overhead so it's financially probably unfeasible. Really, I'm not sure how much brand new ground you can cover in a Rocksmith title outside of new instruments. They've kind of got the core feedback loop nailed down, and if we have to box the game into a subscription service, we'll likely see new nice quality of life features over big, groundbreaking new ideas like the very first game (and to an extent, the second).
www.ubisoft.com
