Rock Band Rivals is launching next week. Whoa.

After recently celebrating Rock Band 4’s first birthday, it’s time to get excited about our upcoming, bigger celebration, happening the night of Rock Band Rivals’ launch. In case you haven’t heard, we’re going to be holding a Virtual Launch Party on Twitch. Unlike previous parties where we have to cap attendance and require you to be in, you know, the same city we are, this one is open to everyone. Got a device that can watch Twitch? You’re invited!

On Monday, October 17th, we’ll kick things off at 5pm ET at Twitch.tv/Harmonix, and we’ll have fun until midnight, at which point Rivals will be launching. When we sign off, those of you with the digital Rivals upgrade will be able to download the update and start playing Rockudrama and posting scores for your Crews.

We’ll cover a lot of the same ground we cover on our normal Rock Band streams. If you haven’t checked out Rockudrama yet, we’ll be playing through some of that. We’ll be creating a Crew and showing you how weekly challenges work in a more detailed way than we have so far. We’ll be giving away DLC codes.

You might be thinking, “Okay, so it’s basically a normal Rock Band stream, right?” Nope! I don’t want to ruin all of our surprises for the night, but here are a few other items (and hints) we’ve got lined up for next week:

• Remember Skratch‘n Snyf? They’re going to have a reunion show, live on our Twitch channel!
• An artist from the studio will be bodypainting …something… on Daniel, Rock Band 4’s Product Manager.
• There’ll be a phone number so you can call in to the party.
• We’ll be giving away a Rivals Band Kit, with other huge giveaways too!
• There’ll be Pop Rocks galore on-hand for something fun.
• There will be a pie on the set, and it will be thrown at someone’s face.

That’s not all, there are other surprises in store, too. You’ll just have to tune in to see what we’ve got up our collective sleeves!

Thursday Edit:

STOP THE PRESSES. We're announcing another giveaway. Fender has given us a super-sexy Jaguar to give away during the stream. Downside: You can't use this to play Rock Band. Upside: It's a real freakin' guitar. Tune in to see how to have a chance at winning!

See you on Monday!