Sony tots up SingStar sales

Sony is bragging that karaoke series SingStar has shifted more than 12 million copies around the world.

Apparently five million were sold between April 2007 and March 2008, while its online SingStore flogged more than one million tracks in the first four months.

Sony has also seen more than 140,000 or you share around 20,000 videos of yourselves singing along to your favourite tracks. Our rendition of "I Try" by Macy Gray is hard to beat.

"SingStar's success is built upon simple and entertaining game play. Historically we have added new music tracks to keep the experience fresh but the arrival of PS3 has allowed us to think differently," said series creator Paulina Bozek, whose name you can find on the leaderboards in SingStar PS3. And she must be rubbish if those are her real scores.

"We can now take advantage of the next-generation features to take the next step forward in the SingStar experience," she added.

Sony recently announced that SingStar PS3 will be out in the US on 20th May. Americans will be given a slightly different SingStore than Europeans because of broadcasting standards; we have few, apparently.

Sony plans to update the US SingStore with 25-50 songs each month, and will also focus on independent music from smaller bands. There's even a mention of entire albums being offered up.

SingStar was released last year in Europe to predictably favourable reviews. Little has changed, other than the addition of SingStore, which has finally begun to get recycled songs from previous instalments.

The second PS3 instalment in the series, SingStar Volume 2, will add a harmony mode and remote play support so you can shop for songs and look at other people's videos on your PSP. There will also be around 30 songs added, including "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and the Papas and "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang.

Pop over to our SingStar PS3 review to find out more.