For all those who are still interested in Music/Rythym games, Rock Band 3 is finally coming (around october-ish i think). Quite a few changes, first off:
-New Instrument Keyboard: Surprised? I certainly was. The keyboard will span 2 octaves (which will be used for another part of the game). Also those who already have a keyboard can buy a adapter that plugs into the MIDI out so you can play your real keyboard for the game.
-Harmonies added: Not so much of a surprise seeing how RB: Beatles and RB: Green Day had them. Including keyboard that brings the total player count up to 7.
-Filter System for choosing songs, this includes song length, genre, what decade it was from. Also includes a rating system where you can rate you song after you play them. Songs rated low will appear less frequently when choosing random (or theres a random setlist). Songs rated high will of coarse be more frequent. Setlists you create will now be able to be saved so you don't have to keep making it.
-And the big one, Pro Mode. Pro mode jacks up the difficulty by bringing you closer to playing the real instrument. Pro mode can be played on all 4 difficulty levels.
Keyboard: Heres where the 2 octaves come into play, instead of playing just 5 different keys (green, red, yellow, blue, and orange), you now have a full 2 octaves to play, and the notes coming down on the track are the actual real notes in the song.
Drums: There are now cymbal notes for yellow, blue, and green. These notes will have to be hit with the cymbal, or cymbals on an electric drum kit.
Guitar/Bass: This is where things get crazy, theres 2 options of controllers here, one is a controller with 6 strings where you strum, and 17 buttons on the fret board per string (same amount of frets on a real guitar, totaling 102 buttons). The 2nd option is a real guitar made by fender that can play on rock band 3 (you can actually plug it into an amp and play). The track will display 6 strings and the notes that scroll down will be the fret number for that string. So basically, playing Pro mode guitar on expert will be like playing the actual guitar tab for that song.
This must be Harmonix's response to all the people who complain about how people should play real instruments, now you can while playing Rock Band. And dont worry, you can still use all your old controllers to play the classic mode.
At last, if you want to see all this in action check out their e3 presentation
Part 1Part 2Part 3