If you owned a plastic guitar in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band years, you’ll remember how that era ended. Too many sequels, too many peripherals, and a pile of downloadable songs that became harder to buy, or simply vanished, as licences lapsed and games were retired. The genre burned out, and the instruments ended
If you owned a plastic guitar in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band years, you’ll remember how that era ended. Too many sequels, too many peripherals, and a pile of downloadable songs that became harder to buy, or simply vanished, as licences lapsed and games were retired. The genre burned out, and the instruments ended up in cupboards.
Stage Tour is RedOctane’s new rhythm game, where you play along to licensed songs on its own wireless guitar and drum kit controllers and microphone, in the same spirit as Guitar Hero.
RedOctane Games wants Stage Tour to avoid that fate. With the game launching on December 10, the studio has now laid out how it plans to keep the game going after launch, how it will sell new music, and when the hardware pre-orders will actually leave the warehouse.
The short version is four big content expansions a year, songs that stay on sale for the length of their licence, new features delivered for free, and drum kits that are now so popular new orders won’t ship until the back half of December.
What is Stage Tour?
Stage Tour is a rhythm-action game from RedOctane Games, a newly formed studio made up of members of the original RedOctane team and former Neversoft and Harmonix developers. Development is also being supported by Third Kind Games and Eidos Montréal.
It launches on December 10, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2, with more than 90 officially licensed songs spanning six decades.
You can play guitar, bass, drums or vocals, solo or with up to four players locally, online or cross-platform. Official Stage Tour hardware is available, along with support for select legacy instruments, but you don’t need an instrument at all. A gamepad or gaming keyboard will do the job.
There are four core modes at launch. Quickplay is the classic pick-a-song-and-go mode. Judgements adds accuracy-based scoring, Karaoke strips out the original vocals and only judges your timing, and Tour mixes rhythm gameplay with roguelite elements, as you work your way from small stages to sold-out arenas. A Practice mode is there for learning the hard bits.
The game also has a multi-year partnership with Gibson, which brings more than 180 Gibson, Epiphone and Kramer guitars into the game.
When the game was first announced in February, the head of the studio framed it as a long-term project rather than a one-off release.
“Stage Tour is our love letter to rhythm gaming. We want Stage Tour to feel familiar and authentic, but also fresh, utilizing modern technology to connect gamers with the music they love and enjoying a platform that evolves and grows over time. With new instruments and deep charting systems, we’re raising the bar on what we believe a rhythm game can be, while also catering to those wishing to simply enjoy a casual experience and have a good time.”
Simon Ebejer, Head of Studio, RedOctane Games.
Drum kits are the hot ticket
On the hardware side, demand is now shaping delivery dates. The initial estimated shipping window is December 1–10, and that’s the window orders leave the warehouse, not when they arrive. RedOctane says delivery typically takes another 2–10 business days after dispatch.
Drum kits and bundles that include drums have already filled that first allocation. New pre-orders for those products have moved to the next window, December 11–31, and as each allocation fills, the window for new orders moves again. RedOctane says there are no manufacturing issues behind the change, it’s purely demand. Game and guitar bundles are still in the December 1–10 window for now.
There are a few other catches. Drum kits won’t be available for Nintendo Switch 2 at launch. If you have a disc-less PS5, there are hardware-only bundles so you can buy the game digitally through the PlayStation Store instead of getting a disc you can’t use.
Digital pre-orders are open now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam and the Epic Games Store, and if you already have a compatible instrument, gamepad or keyboard, you don’t need to buy new hardware.
Four expansions a year
The new detail is what happens after December 10. RedOctane’s current plan is to release four major content expansions, or events, every year. As an example of what one could include, the studio lists over a dozen new songs themed around the expansion, potential new stage venues, and new characters, outfits or in-game instruments.
Between those big drops, there will also be smaller song packs, and individual songs will be available to buy separately. That’s a welcome return to the model players liked best in the old days, where you could grab the one track you actually wanted instead of paying for a bundle of filler.
What we don’t have yet is pricing for any of it. Until those numbers land, it’s impossible to say whether building a decent library will be affordable, so this is the part of the plan worth watching most closely.
No vanishing songs
The bigger promise is about how long that content stays around. RedOctane says songs and expansions will remain available for purchase throughout their licensing periods, which it says are typically 10 years. It isn’t planning limited-time windows where songs or events appear for a few weeks and then disappear.
The studio also addressed what happens when a licence eventually runs out. Once it expires, that content can no longer be sold, but anyone who already owns it keeps the music.
That’s a sensible answer to the fear of missing out that has crept into a lot of live service games, and it should mean a player who picks up Stage Tour in a year or two has access to the same back catalogue as someone who bought it on day one. Ten years is a long time in games, but it’s worth remembering it’s a typical figure rather than a guarantee for every track.
Free features, paid music
RedOctane also says new gameplay features will arrive as free updates. The music is where the money will be made, through expansions, song packs and individual tracks, while the game itself keeps improving for everyone who owns it.
The studio says Stage Tour has been in development for about 18 months, so a lot of the long-term plan will depend on how quickly the team can turn around content once the game is out.
Price and Availability
Australians can order directly from the Stage Tour store, which lists Australia as a shipping destination.
Orders to Australia are fulfilled from the United States on a delivered-duty-paid basis, with GST included in the displayed price, so there shouldn’t be any import charges to pay when it arrives. The seller is RedOctane Labs LLC.
At the time of writing, the Australian prices on the Stage Tour store are:
- Stage Tour Game + Kramer Wireless Guitar Controller Bundle, A$204.99
- Stage Tour Game + Duo Kramer Wireless Guitar Controller Bundle, A$309.99
- Stage Tour Game + Band Kit Bundle, A$464.99
- Stage Tour Drum Kit, A$309.99
- Stage Tour Kramer Wireless Guitar Controller, A$169.99
- Stage Tour Microphone, from A$34.99
- Stage Tour Kick Pedal, A$49.99
- Stage Tour Pro Cymbal Expansion Kit, A$89.99
- Drum Hub with Midi Roadie Adaptor, A$109.99
- Midi Roadie Adaptor, A$39.99
PS5 owners with the disc-less console can get the Band Kit Bundle hardware-only for A$406.50 and the Duo Kramer guitar bundle hardware-only for A$251.50.
Pre-orders are charged in full at checkout, and existing orders can be managed at stgame.io/managepreorders.
For more information, head to Stage Tour.
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