"If you bought a Rock Band song, it should be yours in Rock Band 4," said Sussman. "Everything that you have already exported will come over."
Harmonix is working through the core catalog of Rock Band DLC first, but plans to convert RBN songs as well. RBN songs will be converted after all of the core catalog has been finished.
One big question mark as far as DLC is concerned is Rock Band 3. Sussman told us that there are currently no plans for a Rock Band 3 disc export. However, he qualified that with a caveat, saying that Harmonix wanted to prioritize the items that were important to its fans. If fans want to see a Rock Band 3 disc export, then let Harmonix know via sources such as
Twitter and the
official Rock Band forums.
On the hardware side, Harmonix is working to enable compatibility with legacy hardware. At this point Sussman could not confirm 100% compatibility, but he said the goal was to ensure that PlayStation 3 owners could use their existing hardware on the PlayStation 4 and that Xbox 360 owners could do the same with Xbox One. Harmonix recognizes that hardware is a big investment, much like DLC, and doesn’t want to require players to re-buy things that they already own.
Of course the big question hanging over the room was “Why now?”
"We knew it was a matter of time,” said Sussman “We were waiting for the right time to strike."
"We can do a lot of things that will sustain Rock Band 4 over five to seven years," said Sussman.
