SingStar: The Beginnings

Well it was very much rooted in traditional gaming culture, so you'd be on safari - quite a cartonny, jokey kind of art style - and you'd come across an animal, who'd challenge you to a sing-off. If you could defeat them by singing you'd get to take a photo of them for your photo book - and then you'd carry on, meeting different animals and singing different songs.

It might have appealed to kids or core gamers, but it wasn't really right for a mainstream audience. If I put that game in front of my nan, she'd have wondered what I was doing. Using real videos and real songs was great - it sort of said "We're MTV" - people were entertained by the videos, so it was as much fun to watch as it was to play.

Plus that moves it away from traditional karaoke, which back then was maybe a bit cheesy. Using the real videos made it more aspirational, and the slick styling of Singstar put it more in-line with a sort of interactive MTV.

It's not a karaoke game. It's absolutely not a karaoke game.

Well the association is with a cover done on a MIDI keyboard, with no video... or if there is a video it's of yachts, and lovers holding hands. There's a bouncing ball... it's kind of naff - enjoyable, but a bit naff.

I think what we did was Westernise an Asian concept by adding competition to it. If you go to Asia you'll see it's not a competition, it's very much a social thing. Maybe that's what we, as Westerners, like best?

Also seeing your pitch bar fill up, to know that you're dong well... that elevates it beyond karaoke. We had this company demo of the game out in Paris, and it was the first time it was shown - we knew it was going to be a success when someone filled up the pitch bar singing Wonderwall... everyone went berserk, it was like a concert, people were cheering and clapping.

We knew straight away that was the thing that was going to sell the game, the thing that makes it not karaoke.

At the back of your mind when you say "karaoke" there's a cheap element to it, and that's what we were trying to get away from. Because I think the preconceived idea of karaoke kind of spoils the experience - because this is a very aspirational experience, and it lives or dies on that.

But there were three things there - the first, when we were doing focus test stuff, was the benefits of producing a second microphone weren't linear. It was an exponential leap, because when it was one mic people were very shy, but as soon as you introduced a second person, they became very gregarious. It's a big psychological difference.

The second point was that we had incredible backing from marketing. When we went to them with the technology we suggested a number of different things, but more importantly they decided at that point that, based on what we'd experienced with EyeToy, there was clearly a very big market there that required these experiences that weren't twitch control-type experiences.

Marketing didn't tell us what to do, but they suggested that if we went down the singing route, they would out all their weight into making it the de facto PlayStation singing product. We had a big buy-in from a company point of view, and that was one of the many stars that aligned at that point. Clearly you need to have that backing - if you're fighting against the grain all the time then maybe things aren't going to work, but that was an incredibly important part.

And the final point, as Kevin mentioned, was about leaving stuff open. We had a real argument with senior management about leaving all the stuff in the first EyeToy Play product open. We had it all closed off, and we had a heated discussion as to whether we should have it open or not.

I think the point we came to is that there was an experience there, with 12 mini-games, for everyone... but not every experience was for everyone. Some people like some games, some people liked others, but by having everything open it meant that people could immediately dip in and have fun with what they liked.

Similarly with SingStar, the fact that you've got the carousel and you can just jump in... opening it up gradually just wouldn't make sense.