Rock Band dev at work on at least 2 new AAA games

Rock Band developer Harmonix is keeping busy. During the newest Harmonix podcast, studio director of communications and brand management John Drake revealed the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based developer is at work on more than two new "AAA" franchises. This is on top of Dance Central 3 and Rock Band Blitz, both of which are due out later this year.

Harmonix is cooking up multiple new projects.

No concrete information on the projects was divulged, but Drake teased that at least one of these new franchises may represent a departure from the music-based games the studio has become famous for.

"Some of them are music games, some of them are not full-on rhythm-action games," he said. "Some of them are brand new things that we created from our gut and our brains here at Harmonix. Some are things that we're expanding the universe of."

One thing was clear: none of the new projects are new Rock Band or Dance Central titles.

"I'm talking about completely new stuff," Drake said.

As for Harmonix's current projects, Rock Band Blitz is the first downloadable entry in the series and is due out later this year, while Dance Central 3 is being readied to ship this fall. That Kinect-required game is the sequel to last year's well-received Dance Central 2.