Yes, poolside at the Hotel Solamar in San Diego for Monday's kickoff to Sony's Gamer's Day, members of the press and Sony's squad belted out "Buddy Holly" and tested their vocal range with tracks from bands such as Twisted Sister, Queens of the Stone Age and the Darkness. But before you rush out and plop down your preorder, keep in mind that this was just a build of Sony's karaoke title. None of the more than 30 songs on the SingStar disc or the more than 200 downloadable tracks on the SingStore were definite for the title's fall release.
In fact, definites were in short supply at the SingStar station - there's no official release date; no pricing structure for the tracks in SingStore; and although the PS2 mics from previous versions of the franchise will work, Sony's still kicking around the idea of revamping the instruments. However one big piece of the news did manage to make its way through the "Hey Ya" renditions: the jump to next-gen will not support the PS2's EyeToy. If you want to capture video of you and your friends rocking out to Queen, you'll need to fork over the cash to get the PlayStation Eye, the PS3 successor to the EyeToy throne.
A musical super-store!
The game itself breaks down into three components - Play SingStar, My SingStar Online and SingStore. Play SingStar is a refined version of the gameplay living room lounge lizards have been crooning to for the past two installments - pitch and timing bars are laid over a music video or your live performance, and you need to use your voice to fill in the meters while singing the words on screen. The most noticeable change in the PS3 version was the lack of the goofy EyeToy logo that would pop up mid-performance in SingStar Rocks and SingStar Pop to signal that the EyeToy was about to record. Golden Moments, the snippets of gameplay footage fans could relive at the end of a track, are still in the PS3 version, but now they're combined with Golden Notes. When you see a pitch and timing bar sparkling with tiny stars, it means there are more points at stake and that you're about to go live on camera.
When folks are done reliving their Cher moments, they'll have the option of saving their vocal and video performances to the PS3's hard drive as well as uploading the footage to My SingStar Online. Woven in with your PlayStation Network username, My SingStar will provide a customizable profile featuring your photo, name, favorite band, best score and more online. Think you brought the house down with your Whitney Houston rendition? Upload the video so that all your buds can rate your mic skills, and feel free to poke around the community to see if anyone scored higher than you. There will be a limit to how much you can have uploaded, but specific space limits have yet to be nailed down. The game even has a direct link to your PSN friend's list so that you can drop GonzoGamer268 a line when you best his a-ha score without ever leaving the game.
SingStore will be SingStar's biggest weapon in the fight to be your best bet for karaoke on a videogame console. Even though nothing was official, Monday's store had a diverse selection of songs between 69 and 50 megabytes from the likes of Alice Cooper, the Cardigans and Wolfmother. Pop into SingStore and you can browse the (as of now unpriced) tracks by genre, age or alphabetic order and sample the vocals and video that come with the purchase. Start the download, and you can head back to the game to sing while your machine works. Associate Producer Ryan Hamlyn said the team hopes to add content to the store on a monthly basis and that technology that enables background downloading doubles for background uploading all your killer performances.
... you're sure you want to buy this?
Sadly, there won't be any interaction between your PS2 SingStar discs and the PS3's first installment of the game. Although Rocks and Pop featured an in-game option to swap discs, the differences in today's technology mean the PS3 can't change on the fly. If you're rocking with SingStar on the PS3 and suddenly want your "Hit Me Baby One More Time" fix, you'll have to buy the song from the store or exit out to the cross media bar, insert Pop and go back in.
SingStar's gameplay, store and interface seemed all but done. Check out IGN as we get closer to SingStar's fall debut and start warming up those pipes.
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