[PS3] Singstar

[Arwin]

Can you use the PSEye inbuilt mic? In fact can that be used for anything?!

You can use it for pretty much everything, but I haven't yet tested it for SingStar. SingStar may be a rare exception in that regard - I think it does actively look for SingStar microphones and it does make sense as it requires a certain fidelity and little background noise to be able to accurately match your pitch and such, not to mention that the PS Eye mike would also pick up the music as well as your singing, so it would be difficult I imagine.

Generally though you can select the audio source to use from the available sources, and for in-game chatting and the like (including Eye of Judgment obviously) you can select from your available audio sources, including BlueTooth headsets, old USB headsets, EyeToy mics and PS Eye mics, for instance

 

[Deleted member 7537]

Best PS3 game, at least the most addictive one. I'm trly surprised with the singstore, easy to use and it has really great songs, i've alrealdy bought 15.

 

[patsu]

I wanted to get SingStar this year. Ah well, at least I can watch the PAL gals and guys having fun.

Long time soldier taking a break from finished fight.

Looking good... I have this strange feeling that I might have met her on Resistance before, may be not.

I backed away from my screen in case they dance any more closer...

 

[Deepak]

Looks fun. How is Singstar PS3 doing in EU?

 

[Arwin]

I just booted up Singstar and received an update to 1.10 ...

Googling returns the following fixes:

Singer selection names for duet songs has been fixed
Occasional issue with note display drawing corrected
Occasional problem with 1st golden note of a song not appearing has been fixed
The news panel seen in the online section when you're not connected has been updated

 

[Arwin]

More music for Singstar today, some decent songs in there:

Aha - Take on Me
All Saints - Never Ever
Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name (who? lol)
Editors - Smokers outside the hospital doors
En Vogue - Free Your Mind
The Monkees - Daydream Believer
Robbie Williams - Let me Entertain You
Run DMC - Its Tricky
Sister Sledge - We Are Family
Take That - Relight my Fire

 

[Arwin]

Next update is 7th of March, and looks like a fairly big one:

English
"The Sun Always Shines On TV" - Aha
"Poison" - Alice Cooper
"Nu-Flow" - Big Brovaz
"Uptown Girl" - Bill Joel
"Hit 'Em Up Style" - Blu Cantrell (Oops!)
"End of a Century" - Blur
"Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears
"Speed Of Sound" - Coldplay
"Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" - Crash Test Dummies
"Heroes" - David Bowie
"April Sun In Cuba" - Dragon
"Egypt Song" - Elvira Nickolaisen
"Oh Yeah" - End Of Fashion
"Perfect" - Fairground Attraction
"Buck Rogers" - Feeder
"Keep On Movin'" - Five
"Superstar" - Jamelia
"Stop"- Jamelia
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division
"It's Not That Easy" - Lemar
"Hard Rock Hallelujah" - Lordi
"My Lullaby" - Maria Mena
"Graffiti" - Maxïmo Park
"Going Missing" - Maxïmo Park
"Torn" - Natalie Imbruglia
"Loving you girl" - opus X
"Saints and Sinners" - Paddy Casey
"Whatever Gets You True" - Paddy Casey
"Supergirl" - Reamonn
"Only To Be With You"- Roachford
"Come Get Some" - Rooster
"Love Is The Drug" - Roxy Music
"What About Me" - Shannon Noll
"Wannabe" - Spice Girls
"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Spice Girls
"Deeper Shade of Blue" - Steps
"Dakota" - Stereophonics
"The Bartender And The Thief"- Stereophonics
"I Believe In A Thing Called Love" - The Darkness
"Goodbye Mr A" - The Hoosiers
"Better" - The Screaming Jets
"One Horse Town" - The Thrills
"Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)" - The Thrills
"Teenage Kicks" - The Undertones
"New York, Rio, Tokyo" - Trio Rio
"I Want To Dance With Somebody" - Whitney Houston
German
"Kein Bock Zu Geh'n" - Clueso
"Geboren" - Die Fantastischen Vier
"Leb Den Tag" - Laith Al-Deen
"Bilder von Dir" - Laith Al-Deen
"Tanz Der Moleküle" - MIA
"Abenteuerland" - Pur
"Ich werd' die Welt verändern" - Revolverheld
"Mit Dir Chilln" - Revolverheld
Italian
"Egoista" - Alexia
"Da Grande" - Alexia
"Salirò" - Daniele Silvestri
"Viviere A Color" - Fiorello
"El Diablo" - Litfiba
"Il Mare D'Inverno" - Loredana Berte
"Calma e sanguefreddo" - Luca Di Risio
"Blu" - Paola & Chiara
Norwegian
"På'an igjen" - Jan Eggum
"Vi seiler vår egen sjø" - Kaptein Sabeltann
"Sommerflørt" - Philip and Sandra
Spanish
"Hoy" - Gloria Estefan
"Pienso En Aquella Tarde" - Pereza

 

[JPT]

Funny that a small country like Norway gets 3 songs. While Sweden with twice the population gets 0. Maybe they got in the last update, but still.....

 

[Arwin]

I'm sure that has partly to do which artists signed with Sony and affiliates?

 

[JPT]

I'm sure that has partly to do which artists signed with Sony and affiliates?

Your probably right and Singstar is also quite popular here.
I did a quick search on the song titles on local online musikk store, but none was officially sony labels, but they could ofcourse be affiliates

 

[Sindre]

Funny that a small country like Norway gets 3 songs. While Sweden with twice the population gets 0. Maybe they got in the last update, but still.....

Lol yeah! That's exactly what I thought too!
Never would have imagined a few years back; when I finally get my PS3 I'll be singing along with Jan Eggum in HD!?. . . ;-)

Nice to see some variety though!

 

[Arwin]

And another batch announced for the 21st ... things are definitely looking good here! I think this brings it up close to 170 songs and I'm sure they're not stopping for a while yet. I hope this game really hits it off, also in the U.S. hopefully. It's just really awesome. I still regularly boot it up just to look at the cool videos that people put up there.

Duran Duran: Union Of The Snake
A-ha: Hunting High & Low
Ash: Shining Light
Ash: Girl From Mars
Ash: Kung Fu
Bananarama: Venus
Billy Joel: We Didn’t Start The Fire
Daniel Lindstrom: Coming True
Darin: Money For Nothing
Divinyls: I Touch Myself
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: Summertime
Don Mclean: American Pie
Duran Duran: Is There Something I Should Know
Faith No More: Easy
Kine: In The Air Tonight
Maximo Park: The Coast Is Always Changing
Maximo Park: I Want You To Stay
Mel & Kim: Respectable
Mr Big: To Be With You
Placebo: Pure Morning
Robyn: Show Me Love
Scouting For Girls: She’s So Lovely
Scounting For Girls: Elvis Ain’t Dead
The Creeps: Ooh I Like It.

 

[patsu]

Is SingStar still scheduled for a May launch in US ?

 

[Arwin]

I think so. The only real date I've seen said 2 June, but no idea how official that date is. The game is also getting a small upgrade soon - it was announced in the news section of the game that we will be able to upload 10 video performances per user now, rather than just five.

EDIT: no actually that's when you win this:

Plus, the greatest performances uploaded to My SingStar Online by PLAYSTATION 3 owners will be rewarded with a doubled video upload quota, bringing it up to a grand total of 10.

The reason may be partly that they want to release with a big bang (300+ downloadable tracks) and they're also still very busy releasing the PS2 versions now. Other than that, I can't think of any reason. Usually it's been harder to get European licencing done for these kinds of things, but then again, maybe all that work had already been done for the European market through the PS2 versions.

 

[JPT]

Looks like August

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8597574&st=singstar&type=product&id=1191627182852

 

[Arwin]

Could be. But there was this interview last month:

GN: What are the plans for the PS2 side of the franchise? Is this one of the final PS2 releases before you begin to focus on the PS3?

Ryan Hamlyn: We'll definitely have our hands full, as although we will be working on the PS3 side of things, we're still very much focused on the PS2 side of SingStar, and have ambitious plans that we hope will make our PS2 fans very happy. We even have another PS2 disc—SingStar Pop Vol. 2—that will be released in May alongside the PS3 release and we have more titles planned to support PS2 throughout the year.


Even back then, you could see the crazy in her eyes.
IGN: Level with me: what's your favorite track on SingStar '90s and why?

Ryan Hamlyn: I'd have to say Seal "Kiss from a Rose" because it's such a great song and it's so much fun to sing. It definitely takes me back to the 90s, and brings out the romantic in us all… Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer are close seconds though. As far as duets go, Paula Abdul "Opposites Attract" takes the cake!

(source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/849/849113p2.html)

 

[Arwin]

By the way, for all versions, this site also allows you to upload your home made videos, and there are some pretty good ones on there too, although it's not nearly as cool or easy to browse as the PS3 Online space though of course.

Check the netcasty guy out from Germany, and pick for instance his Cindy Lauper performance, or Britney.

http://www.singstargame.com/en-gb/Performances/

EDIT: I also posted my first video online through the game. It's bad (glasses, bad hair, not shaved, lousy lighting, etc. etc.), but at least I sounded less than horrible on that one. It got 2 stars already.

 

[Arwin]

When I tried to browse and purchase some of the new songs last Friday, the game crashed on me several times! Not so nice, though (hopefully) at least it means that the game is doing well enough to give the servers a run for their money. I'll check later today if this has been fixed now.

 

[Arwin]

I still got a crash tonight, but it's thankfully become very rare now, and in this case after a lot of browsing. I finally noticed how you can search for songs in other languages, which is just as well because some Dutch songs have been added for the first time yesterday. There are now songs in about half of all European languages, which is just awesome.

My wife had two friends over for a make-up session and afterwards my wife asked for some Playstation demonstrations. So I started at MotorStorm with motion controls, then some Tekken (one girl actually played Tekken 8 years ago on a Playstation 1, so she enjoyed seeing that looked these days), then on to some PS Eye stuff. This was really funny, as she was totally wowed by it, constantly having the feeling that there was a hidden camera and she was being made fun of. After some Mesmerize though I put her on some operation Creature Feature which was a huge hit and we also discovered to be very suitable for cooperative multiplayer fun.

From there we went to Sing Star, which covered us for the rest of the night. I have to say, the number of songs up there now (199) has really reached critical mass, to the point where it is easy for everyone to find songs that they really enjoy singing, and having the PS Eye to watch back performances is absolutely hilarious.

The funny thing here was that she had seen the Wii, but she was absolutely blown away by what the PS3 could do, and I'd only shown here these games so far, not even any media features, browser or anything, or any of the other sure fire hits that I often show (super rub-a-dub, flow) - there's just too much good stuff on there now already. Add Buzz to the mix soon, and wow ... .

SingStar right now is an absolutely fantastic game. Nearly flawless, looks absolutely fantastic, and its online features are totally out there. We spent a good while just laughing our asses off at the witty, charming and often hilarious videos posted up there.

Really, if I were Sony, I'd spend some more money on marketing. There are plenty of areas for mainstream gaming in which they beat the Wii hands down, but right now, not in the marketing part.

/gush

 

[Arwin]

Just read that SingStar Vol. 2, which supports new special harmony songs and some other minor upgrades, is going to be available in retail (with new songs on the disc), but the software upgrade will also be available to existing owners of the game (Vol. 1) and most of the songs should be available through the SingStore as well.

They also mention that they're not getting a lot of HD content yet, partly because they don't have that many HD format videos to work with, but that they expect that eventually they'll have a song up there with an HD video. I'm guessing that'll happen as soon as someone with a recent hit and a HD video signs up.

I thought it was interesting by the way that when we had recorded a bit of the song song Smooth Operator by Sade, and I tried to upload it to my online media for others to view, I couldn't and got the message that this particular song had been removed from the SingStore and no performances could be uploaded. I wondered what happened there ... a last minute cancelling of the deal, or a mistake? Or maybe someone posted a video that wasn't appreciated just as Sade happened to be browsing the most recent videos?

By the way, it is a little worrying to me that I'm the only one posting here. SingStar is definitely one of the best music / party games out there thanks to its use of the PS Eye and the 'YouTube' stuff, and it has a tonne of songs now too with the full videos. In that sense, it's definitely distinguishes itself from the other games (Rockstar and Guitar Hero), though of course it is understandable that Rockstar gets a lot of attention, as it combines SingStar and Guitar Hero elements.

I'm hoping that maybe it will change a little when the game finally comes out in the U.S., which I'm hoping will be fairly soon!