I’m no Pavoratti, but I’ve been known to belt out a decent “New York, New York” without much hesitation. As a fan of video games, I’ve enjoyed watching karaoke games evolve. I got into Karaoke Revolution on PlayStation 2, did a duet alongside Katy in SingStar, and loved tambourine tapping while singing in Lips. Those games were fun, but I always got tired of singing the same handful of favorites and never delving into the unfamiliar songs. Downloadable tracks are nice, but they never seem to come out frequently enough to bother loading up the games again.

That’s one of the reasons I was excited to try out Microsoft’s latest stab at karaoke, the free app simply called Karaoke (released for Xbox 350 on Dec. 18). Developer iNiS has teamed up with the Karaoke Channel to offer a library of over 8,000 songs to sing with new additions and free tracks rotated in daily. There’s no marketplace to fumble through or downloads to queue up because it streams all the songs as you choose them. That leads to the other interesting aspect of Karaoke: how you pay.

Rather than charging per song or for “track packs” in Karaoke, you pay for hourly chunks of time like you would at an actual karaoke bar. The cheapest is a two-hour block that costs 240 Microsoft Points ($3.00) with stops at six ($5) and 24 hours ($10). This gives you immediate access to every song in the catalog, and even on my midrange consumer Internet, it never felt like I was wasting time waiting for things to load.

The search function works well with a snappy autocomplete that starts showing you songs and artists right away. The catalog is also pretty easy to browse through with categories for genres, latest additions, and the top 100 songs. Even better, all of this can be accessed onscreen while someone is singing, and all songs get plopped into a queue that you can jump into from almost anywhere. Using a controller works fine, but Karaoke is one place where Xbox SmartGlass really shines.

It’s a little clunky on my first-gen iPad (via the SmartGlass app), but you can navigate the whole catalog and songs in the queue with a couple of taps. You can also view the lyrics to brush up on songs like “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” before they start. There aren’t as many subcategories on the app as in the game, but being able to dig into the catalog while someone is singing maximizes your time and money.

The game does have its downsides. The time you buy is always counting down, so be ready to sing for at least two hours or lose some minutes. Also, you can’t slide in one more five-minute ballad if you don’t have five minutes of time left. Fortunately, the catalog contains several TV theme songs perfect to keep in your queue for those last few minutes.

Playing Karaoke is as easy as finding a song to sing. Any of the fancy voice analysis the game might be scoring you on has been hidden, leaving you to focus on the big, bold lyrics on screen. You won’t find pitch-matching cursors or fancy interface stuff here, nor are there HD music videos or peculiar karaoke stock footage, which may be a bummer to some. Instead, the background features a lively Avatar performance that grows as you continue performing. Keeping things simple has also ruled out multiuser support, so only the paying player’s Avatar will put on a show or earn progress.

That’s right, Karaoke has a leveling system (and Achievements and leaderboards) to keep you coming back. Each song you finish awards you with both fans and money, which unlocks random new items to spruce up your stage and boost your level progress. You’re never playing roadie and placing individual items on a stage — it’s just to keep things fresh as you continue playing. Karaoke also uses Kinect for midsong pose matching, but I didn’t try that.

Paying for playtime may seem odd, but consider that a modern, disc-based karaoke game costs around $20 and only packs a couple dozen songs. For a fraction of that, Karaoke offers hundreds of times the music with nothing to go out and buy unless you don’t already own a pile of Xbox headsets or mics. I wound up having a lot of fun combing through the catalog and singing myself hoarse. For $3, it’s probably the most value and instant satisfaction I’ve ever gotten from a music game.

Score: 4/5

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Microsoft today confirmed its acquisition of home-automation startup R2 Studios, the small company founded by Slingbox creator Blake Krikorian. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

News of the sale broke last week and was followed by Krikorian’s resignation from Amazon’s board to avoid a possible conflict of interests, as VentureBeat previously reported. R2 Studios is known for developing technology to display digital media on TVs as well as its automation control technology for household appliances, heating, lighting, and more.

Under terms of the deal, Microsoft is appointing Krikorian as vice president of its Xbox interactive entertainment business. And while little has been revealed about exactly what his role will be within the company, it seems likely Krikorian will focus on integrating R2 Studio’s technology into Xbox SmartGlass, a second screen platform that lets you interact with the Xbox through tablets and smartphones.

The move also futher signals that Microsoft is continuing its plans to push the Xbox beyond its origins as a video game console.

Microsoft has updated its Xbox Live companion application for iOS devices, giving it a new SmartGlass rebranding.

The free new app is much more intuitive. You can now use the touch screen as it was meant to be used, with gesture-based controls that allow you to swipe the screen to navigate through menu options both on your TV screen and the app itself.

The interface for Xbox SmartGlass, Microsoft’s new second-screen initiative for the Xbox, also just makes more sense. There are five different screens you can swipe through, including a Bing search, home, social, recent, and discover. It’s also much easier to connect with your Xbox shortly after launching the app. Having used my Xbox almost exclusively for the past few months to stream video, I can say that the old app took up to 30 seconds before connecting. And this would happen every time my iPhone screen would sleep.

The biggest addition, and something that should have been in previous versions of the iOS app, is the ability to use the app’s keyboard to input text on the Xbox. Granted, I rarely have need of a full keyboard, but it should come in handy the next time I need to retype my email address, type in a wi-fi user name/password, or sign in to future Xbox Live third-party apps.

Hoping to steal a little thunder from Apple’s expected iPad Mini announcement today, Microsoft announced details of its Xbox SmartGlass app, which extends your entertainment experience across the screens of the TV, tablet, phone, and PC.

Yusuf Mehdi, the chief marketing officer at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Division, said in a blog post that the new app is part of why, as Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer promised, 2012 will be “the most epic year in Microsoft’s history.” On Friday, Microsoft is introducing its Windows 8 operating system and its Surface tablet. SmartGlass is a way to tie everything together, allowing you to take a video on your phone and play it on your TV or get more information about an actor on your flat screen via your tablet.

Microsoft is also showing off a new dashboard update for the Xbox 360 and its Xbox Live online entertainment service. Included is the recently announced Xbox Music service.

“We are bringing the web to the TV like never before with Internet Explorer, launching a brand new music service, and making it even easier to find the entertainment you love using Kinect and Bing voice search,” said Mehdi. “This release is the next step in our journey to transform Xbox 360 from a games console to an all-in-one entertainment system.”

SmartGlass will introduce “amazing multiscreen entertainment experiences,” said Mehdi.

Microsoft is also making improvements to Xbox Games and Xbox Video.

Microsoft said it has 67 million consoles in the market, but now the Xbox experience will become part of hundreds of millions of devices worldwide as it adds to the tablet, PC, and smartphone Windows experience.

Mehdi said, “We realize some may ask, ‘Why are all these apps called Xbox? Isn’t Xbox just a game console?’ For us, the decision to have Xbox stand for our broad entertainment efforts was a simple one. It is a natural evolution of our consumer offering. Even as Xbox has become the number one game console in the world and continued to deliver arguably the best lineup of games in our history, we have seen the use of Xbox broaden to watching TV/movies and listening to music.”

Xbox has 62 TV and entertainment partners. With SmartGlass, Microsoft is recognizing it’s a multidevice, multiscreen world. SmartGlass will make it easier to discover entertainment and access it on Windows 8, Windows RT tablets and PCs, Windows Phone 8, iOS, and Android devices.

With SmartGlass, the available features include the following:

– The ability to use your phone and tablet as remote controls for your Xbox 360 so you can use those devices to pause, rewind, or advance entertainment.
– Starting a movie or TV show on a Windows 8 tablet and finishing it on the big screen through an Xbox 360. You can see the names of cast and crew for the film you are watching and discover related films. The upcoming season of HBO Go’s Game of Thrones will offer Xbox SmartGlass experiences.

– Watching sports on the TV while using a second screen to see follow real-time stats, player bios, news, and highlights you may have missed. This includes SmartGlass-compatible versions of NBA Game Time, ESPN, and UFC in the coming months.

– The ability to access Xbox Music on multiple devices, discover related artists and songs, cue up additional music, and read artist bios.
– Internet Explorer for Xbox, bringing web surfing to the TV. You can use your smartphone or tablet to pan or pinch and zoom to explore the web on the largest and best screen in the house.

– Using second screens to enhance the experience of upcoming games such as Forza: Horizon and Dance Central 3.

[Picture credit: Microsoft]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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For games like Dance Central 3, it’s not unusual to see the addition of new downloadable songs for post-launch support. But this time developer Harmonix is trying something a little different with the release of Dance Central 3 DJ, a companion app powered by the much-touted Xbox SmartGlass platform for tablets and smartphones.

First announced during Microsoft’s press conference at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, Xbox SmartGlass is a software-based application meant to supplement the experience — whether you’re watching a TV show or playing a game — on your Xbox 360 console. You don’t need a Windows phone or tablet to use it, as the app will also be available for iOS and Android devices.

Dance Central 3 DJ, shown to us last week in San Francisco, is one of the first concrete examples of SmartGlass we’ve seen since E3. Harmonix representatives effortlessly rearranged songs and playlists using a Windows 8 tablet (the pictures below are from the mobile version) as journalists played Dance Central 3 on a big screen.

Here’s a rundown of what we saw:

The digital DJ

With its automatic song selection, Dance Central 3′s Party Time mode already makes it easy for anyone to start playing without navigating through menus. But the DJ app goes one step further by queuing up a list of songs in real time without interrupting the game itself, something that’s especially useful if your friends have specific song requests. Party Time’s setting are adjustable as well, such as difficulty, the length of songs (short or full), and the type of dance (Battle, Strike a Pose, Make Your Move, and so on). But you’ll have to wait until the current song and performance is over for those changes to take effect.

You can also manage your custom playlists, like adding or deleting songs and rearranging the order in which they pop up. And if you want to buy more songs, you can look through Harmonix’s music store and add tracks to your shopping cart. You can’t actually buy the songs in the app, however, so you’ll still have to do that from within Dance Central 3.

Stat tracking and Facebook

Outside of streamlining the multiplayer modes, you can use the app to take a peek at your progress in the leaderboards or see how you’re doing on Harmonix-issued challenges (such as scoring a certain number of points in a specific song). For fitness-minded players, you can check on your calorie-burning goals, adjust them if need be, and compare your results from week to week. Any changes you make to your goals are also shown in the game.

And if you’re not too embarrassed about any photos taken by the motion-detecting Kinect camera while playing Dance Central 3, or have sneaky friends who just don’t care, you can upload them to your Facebook account and view them through the app.

Dance Central 3 DJ looks like it’ll be useful for the franchise’s fans, but as one of the first apps to use Xbox SmartGlass, it doesn’t really do anything that we haven’t seen in other mobile apps before. Currently it lacks a specific release date, but Harmonix said it’s ready to go whenever Microsoft decides to make it live. It could be out as soon as Oct, 26, when Xbox SmartGlass launches alongside the Windows 8 operating system.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Signal Studios announced today that its upcoming action role-playing game, Ascend: New Gods, will appear as one of the first free-to-play games on Xbox Live. This fall’s Happy Wars will also rely on microtransactions instead of the traditional model, which includes the cost of the full game and possible downloadable content.

Ascend: New Gods, which was revealed at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in June, will feature “parallel multiplayer” and cross-play between console and mobile versions.

“We want to create a game that delivers an experience beyond what people generally expect from free-to-play titles,” said D. R. Albright, the president and creative director at Signal. “Our business model is integrated into the gameplay in a very elegant way. There’s no begging or distracting pop-ups. Players can get through Ascend without spending a dime, but if they want to purchase items to augment their experience, we make it easy for them to do so. If they choose not to, that’s fine, too.”

The in-game currency, “souls,” provide players access to different items, abilities, upgrades, and character customizations. Players can gain souls either by progressing naturally or spending Microsoft Points through Xbox Live.

The developer plans to use “unique technology” to introduce fresh content more seamlessly into the game.

“Ascend leverages our proprietary dynamic content system to deliver on-the-fly updates,” said Brett Gow, the executive producer for Ascend. “By taking advantage of this system, we’ll be able to quickly make adjustments to the game to meet the demands of both the single-player story and the multiplayer experience. This will allow us to push new content and gameplay updates directly to players without the wait normally associated with console title updates.”

Ascend: New Gods is coming to Xbox Live in early 2013. It supports Microsoft’s Xbox SmartGlass technology, announced in June.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Blame Apple. The success of high-quality, economically priced options on their App Store proved gamers might willingly take their gaming to a nontraditional platform…at least temporarily. A tablet and a smartphone suddenly, unexpectedly, entered the game-console wars. That got some wondering if $60 games with budgets north of $100 million could survive as a business model against an onslaught of 99-cent mega-hits made for $140,000 by four people…such as Angry Birds, reportedly one of the most profitable games in human history.

And now we’ve seen how the big three video game publishers — Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony — decided to respond. Imitation, flattery, and prayer all play their parts.

Each company co-opted the tablet platform in a way that says a lot about them and their corporate philosophy. None, as yet, seems willing to give up on their established price-points, concentrating instead on value-added propositions. All want to convince you that playing a game on one screen won’t cut it anymore. But the actual value added by these tactics depends a lot on what gamers want and expect from their games.

Nintendo’s GamePad

What is it? A new tablet-like controller for Nintendo’s incoming Wii U console, featuring all the buttons, triggers, and analog sticks a hardcore gamer could possibly want in such a device…plus a reactive touchscreen in the middle.

Advantages: The GamePad lets Nintendo evolve the narrative it started with the Wii…namely that it’s not just a matter of what games you play but how you play them. Shooter X might release on every console, but Nintendo wants you to believe the definitive edition only happens on the Wii U due to the unique gameplay options a second, interactive screen offers. It’s also a nice touch that you can play Wii U games on the GamePad without needing a television. But the not-so-secret weapon boils down to asymmetric gameplay, where up to four people run through a game while a fifth on the GamePad plays the same game from a vastly different perspective, possibly with very different goals.

Downside: Reactive touchscreens carry a risk; they work well with a stylus (included with the GamePad) but not as well with fingers. Our time handling GamePads at various events seems to support this, though few games so far rely heavily on touch controls. Nevertheless, those “definitive” experiences feel pretty ill-defined. Batman: Arkham City’s GamePad-specific tricks feel obligatory in the same way most third-party games’ motion controls do on the Wii. Only Ubisoft’s first-person shooter ZombiU, specifically and exclusively designed for the Wii U, feels natural. Though as a game, it might have other issues.

We also recently learned that Nintendo balked at adding a second screen, and for good reason. The extra hardware will likely bump the Wii U into the same, higher price bracket as other gaming consoles (Nintendo’s consoles traditionally sell at $250). So either Nintendo loses its lower-than-the-rest price point, or it takes a loss on every console sold…something it generally doesn’t do.

Microsoft’s Xbox SmartGlass

What is it? An app that gives you an enhanced experience with your games. You might use it to call up info on enemies or landmarks you see while playing a game or to contact friends online.

Advantages: Easy integration. Just like Windows, SmartGlass works with the mobile devices you already own — laptop, tablet, smartphone — and you can bet it’ll come preloaded on every Windows 8 smartphone when it becomes available. We’ve already seen Xbox Live running on a tablet in real time, avatar and all. SmartGlass will give your games a presence on your mobile platforms as well…in spirit, at least. Overall, it’s a staggeringly easy way to throw together a second-screen solution, all while making sure Microsoft doesn’t get into the high-risk hardware-manufacturing business.

Downside: Microsoft doesn’t get the high rewards, either. Completists, superfans, and lore hounds might take an interest in what SmartGlass offers, but its offerings feel disposable to anyone else. By comparison, the planned app supporting Ubisoft’s upcoming, open-world adventure game Watch Dogs helps you interact with the game world in real time and even lets you mess with your friends’ games, whatever console they’re playing on. Nothing announced for SmartGlass sounds remotely as ambitious. And unless Microsoft charges for the app or throws in a number of annoying ads, it’s tough to see how it could make money off of SmartGlass. It’s even tougher to imagine anyone paying for it.

Sony’s PlayStation Vita

What is it? Oh, it’s just a handheld gaming device Sony released last winter. It’s really quite good, but the Vita hasn’t found its footing in the marketplace.

Advantages: The innovation company invented something. The software people made a program. Sony does hardware. Its Vita handheld gaming device already mimics a full console experience fairly well, but with the addition of Cross-Play, the line blurs even more. A Vita user can now join a multiplayer match with people on a PlayStation 3. Cross-Play is only confirmed for the multiplayer brawler PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale so far (think Super Smash Bros., but with Sony characters instead of Mario and other Nintendo icons), but with first-person shooter Call of Duty coming to Vita, the possibilities stack up fast. You can go gunning with your friends in your console games while away from home. That’s major. And the also-new Cross-Controller functions turn the Vita into a GamePad. Surprise, Nintendo.

Judging by the IR port on the original PlayStation Portable, Sony’s wanted to do all this for a long, long time. Technology (and the cloud) finally caught up. If Cross-Play takes off, it will boost the Vita’s fortunes, too…not a bad side effect.

Downside: The Vita retails for $250. Attractive bundles aside, you can get a perfectly good iPhone or Xbox 360 console for less. It’s also likely that Sony wants you to double-dip those game purchases…one All-Stars for your PS3, and one for your Vita. That’s a whole lot of money they expect you to spend. Particularly since, with only All-Stars confirmed for Cross-Play and only DIY platformer Little Big Planet 2 downloadable content (which you have to purchase in addition to the base game) named for Cross-Controller play, Sony’s given us more speculation than reasons to buy in.

So nobody’s perfect…but a lot depends on the developers, the games they create, and how much they apply to that second screen. If real thought and imagination goes into the application of that second screen, great things can result even working within each format’s limitations. A throwaway approach will result in throwaway feature. Nobody wants that. It really all depends on whether developers treat that second screen like an advantage or an obligation.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Microsoft announced today that its new Xbox SmartGlass technology will integrate smartphones and tablets with the games and entertainment that you play and watch on the Xbox 360 console.

Marc Whitten, a Microsoft executive, said that the new technology will let you use your smartphone or tablet as a remote control for your Xbox 360. When you watch a Game of Thrones episode on HBO Go, you can tap on the tablet screen to start the show. And the tablet will then give you information about the cast and plot.

And as the show progresses, the tablet or smartphone will keep up. For instance, you will see a map of the Game of Thrones universe update based on the location being shown on your TV. That’s a smart technology.

“With Microsoft SmartGlass, movies are more engaging,” Whitten said.

With this technology, developers will be able to create transmedia experiences, where they integrate their tablet, smartphone, and Xbox 360 applications tightly together. Whitten called that “multiscreen entertainment.” It turns any TV into a smart TV, Whitten said.

Microsoft is also introducing Internet Explorer for the TV. SmartGlass will work with new Windows 8 tablets and PCs later this year.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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