EyeToy Creators Try PS2 Karaoke With SingStar

Thanks to the Gaming-Age forum regulars for pointing to a French site showing new pictures of Sony's PlayStation 2 karaoke title, SingStar. Among the details for the USB-microphone bundled game is the fact "there'll be [multiple] versions of the game" with different songs released simultaneously, including SingStar Pop and SingStar Classics - there are detailed tracklistings on the same site. The game also "recognizes your pitch, tone and rhythm" much like Harmonix/Konami's Karaoke Revolution, and an earlier preview notes: "Plug in an [USB camera] EyeToy and you'll even be able to view your own pained facial expressions [in-game]." The game, developed by EyeToy creators Sony London Studio, is due for European release in March 2004, with its Stateside debut as yet unconfirmed.

Comments

Based on the pictures...

[toasted_calamari]

It looks like it tracks both timing and pitch, sounds nifty, must have one hell of a signal analysis software in it to figure out whether the person is on target.

I hope it has a good music selection, sounds like a cool game, kinda like a vocal Dance Dance Revolution

Re:Based on the pictures...

[MBCook]

The Konami one works very well, but they are unable to know what you're saying, so you could just go "La La La" through every song and it would take it and tell you your doing great. While this means you could sing parodies and such, it also means you could "cheat" by "La La"ing through tough parts.

Here's a winning combo

[77Punker]

Pair this style of game with a Dance Dance Revolution type of thing and you could have a Backstreet Boys training simulator!

Karaoke and Game Consoles

[WebGangsta]

After having an oppotunity this week to play both Karaoke Revolution and Xbox Music Mixer with a bunch of people who really don't get into karaoke in the first place, here's my take on this topic:

You can't have enough of these, and if you have either a PS2, an XBox, or even just a plain-old DVD player, you do not need to have a separate karaoke machine in your house too.

That said, the PS2 Karaoke Revolution game received the biggest raves and participation from my crowd when compared to the XBox Music Mixer. I think it had to do more with the concept of giving people a reason to grab the microphone and sing -- people weren't trying to sing well, they were just trying to sing to match the scoring indicator (although those who DID sing well scored higher in the game). The fun part was that the game could still be played and be fun (that is, score points) even if you were a really, really bad singer. This, along with the interesting background graphics truly made this a game environment rather than a "who wants to sing" piece. And while the headset microphone is a bit flimsy and not really geared to a human adult head, it served its purpose and didn't really get in the way of the singing-as-game process.

When we switched to the Xbox Music Mixer, it was more of a generic karaoke experience, and therefore a bit of a turnoff for those people who were more shy or uninterested in actually singing. Of course, with the ability to add any number of relatively new XMM songs to the system for $2-a-pop via the Internet, the XMM makes for a valid karaoke machine for those people who don't currently have one.

So what's my plan now?

• I'm certainly going to get any Konami expansion packs for Karaoke Revolution that get released. Yes, the crowd loved this game that much for me to do this.
• I'm going to look into the Code Junkie karaoke package for the PS2 available at my local discount software shop for around $30, featuring 3 CDs of music.
• I'm going to evaluate the concept that some people have of creating their own WMA+G files from their existing karaoke collections for downloading onto the XBox, while shelling out $2/per current song that I can't find on a current karaoke CD.
• And for those times when I don't feel like firing up the PS2 or the XBox to sing karaoke, I'll plop a karaoke DVD in and let people sing along with those -- no karaoke machine is necessary. Now if only I could figure out the best way to pump the DVD audio and a vocal mic through my standard A/V receiver, then I'll have all my bases covered -- suggestions appreciated, although I was just going to hook up my tape deck and plug mics into that, then pressing REC-PAUSE to activate the mics and hope the audio feeds through. Unless I should buy this nifty gadget which seems to address the problem.