Fortnite’s Music Mode Is More Like Rock Band After New Update

Fortnite Festival’s new season starring digital superstar Hatsune Miku is now live and that’s cool and all. The big news from this update, however, is that you can now play with three other people on a single console and TV, which means Fortnite Festival is getting closer and closer to being an actual Rock Band successor.

Launched in December 2023, Fortnite Festival is a music rhythm game developed by Harmonix. It lives inside Fortnite and is free-to-play. Since it launched, the game has received numerous updates improving the mode, introducing new features, and adding new songs. And now Epic has added what might be the best feature yet.

On January 13, Epic Games released Season 7 of Fortnite Festival. The new season is headlined by Hatsune Miku and includes music from the digital pop star as well as items based on her design. But this season also added local multiplayer. Yes, you can finally invite your friends over and (sort of) recreate the magic of Rock Band in Fortnite via 4 player same screen co-op.

Even better, back in Season 3, Epic added plastic guitar support for Fortnite Festival. So you might be able to pull out that old Xbox or PlayStation guitar from the closet and hook it up and jam together with players using controllers.

Now there are some restrictions on Festival local play. A small one is that this co-op mode is only available on PlayStation and Xbox consoles. The bigger restriction is that each player needs to have an Epic Games account and be signed into the console and Fortnite. Epic specifically says you can’t use guest accounts on either console. That’s annoying, but to get around this you could just create a few free Epic Game accounts and tie them to some free PSN or Xbox accounts. Then, when people come over to jam, just log each controller into those dummy accounts before playing.

Sadly, Fortnite has yet to add plastic drum support or the ability to use a microphone, so it ain’t quite a full Rock Band replacement yet. But hey, we’re getting there!

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