KickStart Rock Band 3.5

So anybody who knows me knows that I'm one of those people who still plays Rock Band.  Incessantly. I play it for several reasons:

• My wife loves to sing, and I love to hear her sing.
• I love to play drums, but cannot remember any particular beats, so sight-reading the drum lane is very fun for me.
• Drumming gives me some good exercise.  Especially RUSH, even though they're always really humbling to play.
• It's just damned fun.

Anyway, for those who don't know, Harmonix has decided to stop producing DLC for RockBand.  That's understandable.  They set up Rock Band Network (RBN) to be a marketplace where 3rd parties could provide DLC, rather than Harmonix doing it, and are now off doing other stuff.

But there are is a big problem with this, for PlayStation 3 players, like myself: the amount of stuff that migrates from XBox RBN to PlayStation 3 RBN is incredibly limited.  So PS3 gamers feel a bit "out in the cold."

Earlier today, I proposed putting together a KickStarter to start a non-profit company to basically partner with Harmonix to take over game patches and continue the DLC. Chad Flake pointed out that RBN is intended to continue the DLC, and patches are expensive due to Microsoft charging $40k per patch released to XBox:

• https://www.facebook.com/RockBand/posts/10151625362105209?comment_id=225429244&notif_t=feed_comment

So in my mind, XBox patch pricing, while outrageous, falls exactly in the cost structure for a KickStarter.  Let's do a little bit of math:

• Microsoft Patch Tax: $40,000
• Programmer: $60,000
• QA Engineer: $60,000

That looks to me like a roughly $160,000 budget. Probably on the high end for a KickStarter, but I think enough value could be put into a RockBand 3 patch to make it something that folks would support.  Would it be $160,000 worth of support?  Who knows?!  I could probably take vacation and donate my time, which would mean the programmer position would be removed, cutting the budget to $100k, but I would need to fly to Boston and work at Harmonix so I could pick the brains of the experts, again, if they'd be willing to let me :-)  That'd probably add a few thousand back in, but I could probably find a QA person (I bet my wife would volunteer) and the QA costs would disappear.

Here's the backlog I would like to see:

• Update PS3, XBox, and WII to utilize a single web service outside the confines of any platform's game store for purchasing RBN DLC (possibly in addition to the platform's game store)
• Update RB3 so that song metadata is indexed.  Currently the game takes what feels like an eternity to start if you have a substantial DLC library - it looks from playing it like the game is reading individual song files on every launch rather than a small sqlite-ish index.
• Update RB3 to remember microphone settings
• Update RB3 so that big rock endings do not require both microphones if you're singing solo but the song supports harmonies.
• Update RB3 to remove the 3,000 song limit.  I am currently very picky about what songs I will purchase because it has been publicized that RB3 will allow you to have, at most, 3,000 songs.  That and the ridiculous startup time.
• Update RB3 to allow downloading DLC from an authoring PC, even on PS3, or for a PC to push those songs to it while it's running.
• Update RB3 so game avatars can be more "set in stone."  Currently the game will occasionally forget which avatars you like to have playing.
• Update RB3 to remember little things like "I play Expert Drums in Pro Mode" Why do I need to choose that every time I start browsing songs?  Or "I sing in Solo Expert Mode"
• Update RB3 to optionally not show the cut scene before and after songs.  When I want to rock, I want to ROCK.  RIGHT NOW.
• Update RB3 to optionally not show the avatars playing at all - just a blank background or some visualization, or whatever.
• Update RB3 to allow 3rd parties to provide new avatars and animations, available from the web service that would provide the RBN DLC.  Maybe somebody wants to pretend they're aliens playing music, or fish, or whatever.
• Add a web server to RB3 so that people using cell phones, tablets, or whatever, logged into the same network as the game, could browse the song list and queue up songs they'd like to hear or perform.  This would be an excellent addition for Rock Band parties, and open the door to using RB3 as the "new karaoke."
• On the same lines, add better song library navigation.  Search would be a great option to have.  Especially if I could search for lyrics - I don't always know the song's name, for example.
• Whatever others would like to have.

I guess the point is that there's a lot that could be added to the game if Harmonix will let somebody come in and do it, and I think/hope the community would be willing to step up and fund it.  It would basically be a Rock Band 3.5 release.