Your old Rock Band guitars now work in Fortnite Festival

Your old Rock Band guitars now work in Fortnite Festival

Billie Eilish is the latest music icon to join the game.

Your old Rock Band guitars now work in Fortnite Festival | DeviceDaily.com
Epic Games

You may be able to give those plastic Rock Band guitars you have stuffed away in the attic a new lease of life. Fortnite Festival (a Rock Band-style mode that debuted in Fortnite in December) now supports several Rock Band 4 controllers across PlayStation, Xbox and PC, as detailed in a blog post.

If you have a compatible plastic guitar, you can use it to play new Pro Lead and Pro Bass parts in any Jam Track. These parts have colored notes for each lane that match with the guitar controller buttons. They also include hammer-on and pull-off notes — just like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Epic Games (which bought Rock Band developer Harmonix in 2021 to build music experiences for Fortnite) plans to add support for more peripherals down the line. Hopefully, the developers will make the whammy bar more useful beyond triggering a visual effect too.

Epic previously said it would add support for Rock Band guitars. Earlier this year, third-party peripheral maker PDP (which Turtle Beach recently purchased) unveiled a new Xbox and PlayStation wireless guitar controller for Rock Band 4 and Fortnite Festival.

Support for the Rock Band peripherals come just as Billie Eilish joins the game as its new music icon. Several of her songs are available to buy and use in Fortnite Festival, and you’ll be able to purchase an Eilish outfit (or unlock one through a secondary battle pass) and play as her in the Battle Royale mode.

Meanwhile, Epic has added a setting that allows players to hide certain emotes that others often use for trolling in Battle Royale. For instance, after being eliminated, a player might not want to see a rival using the “Take the L” emote, which involves making the shape of an “L” (for “loser”) on their forehead and doing a silly dance. The setting won’t stop players from using any emotes and it only hides four of them for now. Somehow, one of the emotes that the setting doesn’t hide is a personal favorite called “Rage Quit.”

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

(13)