SingStar is a series of competitive karaoke video games falling under party games in the video genre. The games were developed by London Studio for Sony Computer Entertainment to publish it for PlayStation 2 and later extended to PlayStation 3 in December 2007.
The games are sold in two different ways, either as software alone or along with two USB microphones - one red and one blue. They can also be connected to EyeToy camera in which the players can see themselves as they are singing with the microphones in their hands.
As the players sing along with music with their microphones, their console scores their points by analyzing their pitch - displayed as horizontal grey bars with corresponding lyrics displayed at the bottom of the screen - as it proceeds along with the words of the song they are singing, comparing it with that of the original track and electronically judging how accurate the singer is in his rendering of the song.
There are many game modes available in all the versions of the game. The standard singing mode is limited to one or two people for the purpose of singing together or against each other in order to win. In Pass the Mic mode eight people in two teams can participate singing in rounds for their team to win.
When the game was introduced first, there was a game mode named Star Maker for a single person to participate and record her/his performance; but in the later versions multiplayer and party modes came out to prove more popular than this single player mode was received by the enthusiasts.
The SingStar series as karaoke video games under party games in the video genre has been received quite enthusiastically in Europe and Australia selling over 12 million units in the PAL region along with 1.5 million units in the United States. It also received the award for originality at the BAFTA Games Awards in 2005.
US $5.53
