Epic Games announced today that Billie Eilish will headline Fortnite Festival’s third season, which starts today and runs through June 13. Similar to other musical guests like The Weeknd and Lady Gaga, players will be able to purchase a festival pass featuring cosmetics inspired by the artist that are unlocked as you play through the game’s Rock Band-inspired, Harmonix-developed Festival mode.
Epic also revealed a pretty big feature aiming to bring the Festival experience a little closer to the aforementioned games that inspired it: Support for guitar controllers. Now, before you start digging up whatever guitar you used to play Rock Band with in the past, it’s worth noting that the number of official supported controllers is pretty small to start. Furthermore, you’ll need to be playing Festival on PC, PlayStation 4/5, or an Xbox console to utilize these controllers — Switch players seem to be out of luck, for now at least. We’ve listed the supported controllers by platform below:
PlayStation 4/5
- RIFFMASTER Wireless Guitar Controller for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
- RockBand 4 Rivals Wireless Fender Jaguar Guitar for PlayStation 4
- RockBand 4 Wireless Fender™ Stratocaster™ Guitar for PlayStation 4
Xbox/PC
- RIFFMASTER Wireless Guitar Controller for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC
- RockBand 4 Rivals Wireless Fender Jaguar Guitar for Xbox One
- RockBand 4 Wireless Fender Stratocaster Guitar for Xbox One
For now, you won’t be able to hook up any drum sets for Festival, but Epic did advise that it has “more instrument controller news to announce in the future,” so it seems only a matter of time before you can start clearing space in your living room for those nostalgia-inducing plastic drum sets.
Despite being fans of Rock Band as kids, as well as avid Fortnite player nowadays, we weren’t particularly taken with the mode at launch. Using a regular gamepad to play what is, in essence, Rock Band, isn’t great, but the novelty of seeing characters like Solid Snake and Daredevil sing, shred, and drum their hearts out made for a pretty amusing pastime. We’re definitely looking forward to giving the mode another shot with a proper guitar controller this time around.
