The heyday of music/rhythm games has long since passed, but there are still scores of players out there banging away on plastic intruments and living out their virtual rock star fantasies. Every week for the past four years, Harmonix has been there for those players, offering up weekly DLC for its defining game, Rock Band.

With no new Rock Band retail title since 2010's Rock Band 3, and Harmonix promising a "fundamental creative retinterpretation" of the franchise, could the seemingly bottomless well of weekly Rock Band DLC finally be running dry? According to Harmonix's John Drake, not a chance.

While 2011 saw Harmonix focus on Dance Central 2, one of Kinect's flagship titles, the developer is also quietly working on a couple of new, as-yet-unannounced music games. Additionally, there has been the ongoing legal battle between former Harmonix shareholders and one-time Harmonix owner Viacom to deal with -- the most recent development being the finding by a jointly-appointed accountant that Viacom actually owes those shareholders $383 million dollars. Regardless of everything else it has going on, Harmonix hasn't forgotten about the legion of Rock Band fans who still look forward to new content every week.

Speaking with Joystiq at GDC 2012, Harmonix's Director of Communications & Brand Management, John Drake, promised that weekly Rock Band DLC will continue to be offered.

"We've been really pleased with the continued performance of Rock Band downloadable content. We've delivered over four years of weekly DLC and over 3500 songs for the music platform, and we have no plans to stop weekly releases any time soon. Fans can tell us what songs they want by visiting our new Rock Band Dashboard Facebook App and voting for their favorite artists using the built-in Wishlist feature."

Interested gamers can check out the Rock Band Dashboard Facebook App to set up a Wishlist. Harmonix has a solid reputation for listening to its fans -- in fact, just a few weeks ago, the company finally made the most requested song in Rock Band history available for download: "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

Rock Band fans, are you relieved to know that Harmonix will continue to support the game with weekly DLC? What song would you most like to be made available? Leave your suggestions in the comments below.

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Source: Joystiq, Gamasutra, Riverfront Times