The game was announced on March 5, 2009. There aren't many big changes in gameplay, although Vicarious Visions stated that they worked on the strum mechanics. It will include a new single-player career mode using "fan requests" to create a new non-linear progression through the songs in the games. Fan Requests are objective-based scenarios in which the player must achieve a certain goal, usually in Points, Stars, Percentage, etc. These were added to help move from gameplay that was "just going, playing a venue, and then moving on to the next one" and instead to "open the world up".