E3 2010: SingStar branches out

Having bossed the karaoke market for the last decade, Sony’s SingStar series is turning its hand to something new – dancing and instruments.

Singstar Dance will allow up to two players to move along to the music using PlayStation Move controllers. Users are required to mimic the actions of the on-screen avatar. Rather than watching the music videos players will instead watch themselves via the video captured by the PlayStation Eye.

SingStar Guitar, on the other hand, will allow those who own either a Guitar Hero or Rock Band instrument to strum along as their friends sing.

The key thing for us is to give people new features while retaining that classic SingStar look and feel,” SingStar director Dave Ranyard stated. For me, SingStar is all about family parties and these new features encourage more people to get involved.”

With SingStar Dance we’re able to augment the PlayStation Move motion controller so that you see sparkles and ribbons flowing from it. We already have the Video Editor and things like this will allow our community to be even more creative.”

SingStar Guitar songs are quite simply those that are most fun to play on guitar. On some tracks we’ve taken the bass line. With SingStar Dance songs it’s very much about the tempo.

Slower tracks aren’t so good to dance to, generally speaking, but maybe we’ll find an exception to that rule. In terms of genres we have a broad range, from salsa to country to pop.”

Sony has warned that Dance and Guitar support will not be applied to the entire SingStar catalogue, though both will see post-release DLC releases.

SingStar Dance and SingStar Guitar are due for a Blu-ray boxed release some time later this year.