MEET THE ROCK BAND RIVALS COMPANION APP, AVAILABLE NOW!

Posted by Harmonix

Hey gang! It happened – we made a Companion App!
During the development of Rock Band Rivals, as we started to fully understand how the feature was going to work and how people were going to interact with it, we realized that a companion app would be a perfect complement to the console experience. Earlier this year, we started work on a Companion App: Rock Band Companion, which is out today on iOS and Android, simultaneously launching with Rock Band Rivals (that’s today!).
The app is free for everyone to download, and offers value to all Rock Band 4 players, even those who haven’t upgraded to Rivals quite yet. You’ll need to link up your Xbox Gamertag or PlayStation Network ID in order to use the Rock Band Companion app. Once you’re linked, all of your Rock Band gameplay information will be displayed in the app, including a detailed set of Rivals-specific gameplay stats.

So, what does the app do? Primarily, Rock Band Companion duplicates all of the followingRivals information found in the game:

• Weekly Challenge Data: Don’t be caught without your Spotlight Song scores, Crew XP, Rivals points, and Tier placement information both during and after each Weekly Challenge.
• Crew Moderation: In the Rock Band Companion, you can create, join, and leave Crews. You can invite and kick people from Crews as well, compare your Crew to other Crews, and check out their progress, roster, and other juicy details. You can also check out your Crew and personal Badges.
• Activity Feed: Information found in your Activity Feed in-game is duplicated in theRock Band Companion app. If you are playing Rivals, this will display a rich list of all the recent activity from your Crew.

The app can send push notifications to your mobile device, as well. Our developers went a little crazy with the notification options, so you can really control what you want to know about Rivals on your phone (including turning them off entirely, that’s cool…we get it…you don’t want that annoying notification sound playing during your important work meeting). If you need to know that the Weekly Challenge is ending soon, or that one of your Crew members just told you to “Step It Up”, or if…well, you get the idea.

COMPANION-EXCLUSIVE FEATURES

We also added some features that are ONLY available within the app. The biggest one is “Crew Chat”, a private, Crew-only chat room where you can strategize with your Crew, trash talk other Crews, or just chat about the latest episode of Westworld.
But the app isn’t useful only for people who have purchased the expansion. You can also check out your Player Profile, with all the same stats that are available in game: disc song scores, gold star songs, song plays, skill, etc. Plus, you can compare your profile to any other player.
The Player Profile and Activity Feed will be available to everyone who has played Rock Band. The Rivals-specific features will be useful if you’ve got a hand in Rivals. Rock BandCompanion will be free for everyone to download, and most useful for Rivals players.
The data in the app should be updated just about as fast as the game, so it should always be up to date with your Crew info, your Weekly Challenge stats, and your latest gold star performance. One of the main reasons we built the app is so that you can check out how your Rivals Crew is doing at any time, without having to boot up your console. About to get demoted to a lower Tier? Log on later that night and bang out some much needed Crew XP to keep your Crew safe. Don’t forget to complain in the Crew Chat that no one else is pulling their weight.
One of the best things about working on the Companion App has been the developers. We hired two passionate, enthusiastic Rock Band community members who also happen to be mobile developers: Andy Sage (pksage) and Andrea Orchesi (farottone). Andy and Andrea (A2 Software) brought a ton of experience, real-world Rock Band smarts, and a player’s perspective to the development, and they did a fantastic job.

Just as Rock Band is a platform, we see Rock Band Companion as your mobile window into your entire Rock Band experience. There are a ton of different ways that we could make the app better, and we plan on doing just that as our development carries on. We are hopeful that continued development after launch will allow us to make Rock Band Companion even more useful, nay, indispensable, in the near future.
In conclusion: if you are a Rock Band player, and especially if you are a Rivals player, try our app out! Download it today on iOS and Android devices, link your console ID, and bask in the mobile glory of Rock Band Companion.