With the huge shift away from peripheral-based games, I don't see GH/RB ever getting anywhere close to what they were during their heyday. It'd be great to see, but so many factors work heavily against everything. VR games that don't require a specific controller are pretty neat, but any player who wants something that would actually challenge them won't get that challenge from a VR game as it'll generally be slower and notecharts would never be as dense (just talking about GH/RB like games here, not others like Beat Saber).
Even with 3D printing getting much more commonplace nowadays you'd still need to get all the components and wires to build a working controller, and while those component kits wouldn't take anywhere near the same space on a retail shelf they'd still require enough knowledge on how to put it together to the point where most wouldn't want to bother. And that's not even mentioning the quality of the printed material since it likely wouldn't hold up to too much beating over time unless you sprung for higher quality filaments. Even with the official Guitar Hero Live guitars, we've seen just how low quality an official release could be with damn near every single guitar having some sort of issue (the first one I bought came with a broken dongle, the other two I'd owned over time ended up with squeaky/sticky frets after a week).
There are still a small handful of companies out there selling 'new' guitars (far as anyone can tell they're new) though, like GameBuddies on Amazon but most would suggest modding those anyways to make them more functional (stuff like replacing the silicone pads in the frets).
And that's just a bit of talking about the current controller situation, then there's the humongous hurdles that music licensing brings, but nowadays with so many smaller groups/bands on the internet it's not that hard to find people willing to give their material for cheap or free if it brings them the exposure they need to even get noticed. I still can't get past how we managed to get Dragonforce for Clone Hero, that was them coming to us since they wanted to give back to the community after the many years of their label nuking every video that used their music.
Going forward into the future and making the games more about streaming, there's quite a few interesting things that we've thought of on where we can go with that. Twitch Sings was neat and short lived and all, but imagine something like that in VR where you could be standing in a virtual concert and watching your favorite streamer going at it on stage. At this point it really seems like some sort of big shakeup like that is what's needed to even have a chance to be noticed anymore on a large scale. If it wasn't for streamers, Clone Hero wouldn't really have ever been known.
Even with 3D printing getting much more commonplace nowadays you'd still need to get all the components and wires to build a working controller, and while those component kits wouldn't take anywhere near the same space on a retail shelf they'd still require enough knowledge on how to put it together to the point where most wouldn't want to bother. And that's not even mentioning the quality of the printed material since it likely wouldn't hold up to too much beating over time unless you sprung for higher quality filaments. Even with the official Guitar Hero Live guitars, we've seen just how low quality an official release could be with damn near every single guitar having some sort of issue (the first one I bought came with a broken dongle, the other two I'd owned over time ended up with squeaky/sticky frets after a week).
There are still a small handful of companies out there selling 'new' guitars (far as anyone can tell they're new) though, like GameBuddies on Amazon but most would suggest modding those anyways to make them more functional (stuff like replacing the silicone pads in the frets).
And that's just a bit of talking about the current controller situation, then there's the humongous hurdles that music licensing brings, but nowadays with so many smaller groups/bands on the internet it's not that hard to find people willing to give their material for cheap or free if it brings them the exposure they need to even get noticed. I still can't get past how we managed to get Dragonforce for Clone Hero, that was them coming to us since they wanted to give back to the community after the many years of their label nuking every video that used their music.
Going forward into the future and making the games more about streaming, there's quite a few interesting things that we've thought of on where we can go with that. Twitch Sings was neat and short lived and all, but imagine something like that in VR where you could be standing in a virtual concert and watching your favorite streamer going at it on stage. At this point it really seems like some sort of big shakeup like that is what's needed to even have a chance to be noticed anymore on a large scale. If it wasn't for streamers, Clone Hero wouldn't really have ever been known.
