No Rock Band 4 this year

There will be no Rock Band 4 this year, developer Harmonix has confirmed.

Speaking in a lengthy interview with GameInformer, Harmonix exec Chris Rigopulos said that the studio had no immediate plans for a sequel, but is actively working on new concepts for the franchise.

"Rock Band 3 is a big game with lots of available music content and lots of new goals and challenges. We want to give our fans the time to explore that fully," he explained.

"But rest assured that Harmonix is still developing new ideas and concepts to advance the Rock Band franchise, and we look forward to sharing those when the time is right."

Instead of a full sequel, you'll have to make do with DLC, of which it sounds like there's plenty in the pipeline. Tracks from Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga and Ozzy Osbourne are all apparently due later this month.

Rigopulos was at pains to point out that the market for Rock Band DLC was in ruddy health, despite reports of the music genre being in terminal decline.

Nearly five million different accounts have paid for a DLC track since 2007, he revealed, with total purchases recently passing the 100 million mark.

"With all of the negative press around the band genre, you might be surprised to learn that we still see more than a million unique users log on each month to play Rock Band and to pick up new music – and it's not the same million players each month.

"Rock Band is a game that people can put down for a month to play Portal 2, or whatever new release captures their attention, and then fire up Rock Band again."

Rock Band 3 launched late last year on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360, scoring a perfect 10/10 from Eurogamer.