SingStar Franchise Tallies 12m Sales News

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that its SingStar series of games has notched up an impressive 12 million unit sales in PAL territories since 2004. According to the first party publisher, 5 million of these came in Sony's 2007/08 financial year ending March 31st 2008.

The online offerings for the first PS3 game in the series (which was released last December) have also pulled in large crowds, with users downloading over a million tracks on the SingStore hub within Sony's PlayStation Store.

"SingStar's success is built upon simple and entertaining game play," commented SingStar's Executive Producer, Paulina Bozek. "Historically we have added new music tracks to keep the experience fresh but the arrival of PS3 has allowed us to think differently. We can now take advantage of the next-generation features to take the next step forward in the SingStar experience. The launch of SingStore and My SingStar Online is the realisation of this and the experience is now more user-focused, personalised and interactive."

Additionally, SingStar's take on MySpace - My SingStar Online - has 120,000 registered users who have pumped out 20,000 videos of their karaoke exploits, which have been watched 2.5 million times by members of the community.

"The term 'social gaming' is widely recognised in 2008 - however, it was relatively new when we launched the first SingStar title in 2004," said Mark Hardy, SCEE's Director of Product Marketing. "That game entered the charts at number one in many countries, allowing us to pioneer the social gaming category and a new market of consumers who might not have bought games before. We really are teaching the world to sing with SingStar - and business for 2008 is looking excellent."