First, the confirmation of what many suspected: yes, Rock Band 4 is officially coming, and is slated for release for the

"It's one of those things that's still in progress so it's hard for me to say yes, we'll do it, but we want people to know and understand that we are working our asses off to make it done because we know it's important to people."

An even bigger challenge also looms: making sure the close to 3000 songs already available on the Rock Band network will be playable on new consoles when Rock Band 4 ships. Harmonix is also planning on making sure any songs you already own seamlessly transfer to the PS4/Xbox One.

"We have been working with Sony and Microsoft to support legacy entitlements, so that DLC you bought on the PS3 will carry forward to the PS4, and same with the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One.

This is a lot of work on two fronts. It's a lot of heavy lifting on the development side and also on the first party side," Sussman said.

"We're starting to get songs up and through the QA process now. It's one of those things that I don't want to say we'll have a set number for launch, because I don't want to be wrong, but it is our intent to support the whole catalog."

It's an ambitious goal: full support of old controllers and legacy entitlements for DLC ready to go with a brand new Rock Band game will be, frankly, an impressive achievement, and one that will earn Harmonix tremendous goodwill from fans both current and lapsed. Of course, old entitlements won't be the only thing Rock Band 4 brings. Sussman hints at new ways the team is looking at to improve band "dynamics", to shift the focus away from purely perfecting individual performance, to give players more time for "self-expression." He doesn't give me any more clues as to what these new things will be, but he is clear on one point: don't expect a slew of other Rock Band titles following 4. Rock Band 4 will be the Rock Band game for the PS4 and Xbox One.

"We want to treat this game as the game for this console generation. We are calling it Rock Band 4 because it's deserving the 4--there's a lot of innovative stuff that's built into our design. At the same time we don't envision a Rock Band 5, 6, 7 or 8. What we would rather do is build on the Rock Band 4 feature set through very deliberate content and title updates that are developed in collaboration and conversation with our community," he said.