Tom Kiss

A few goodbyes

Tuesday 24th February 2009

I organised a big party last night, to say some farewells and share a few beers with ex-colleagues from NCsoft Europe.

It was great fun. Took the PS3 along for a bit of a SingStar sing song. Drunken video evidence below, of perhaps one of the more fitting songs.

Towards the end it was pretty funny. With a hardcore group of about 15 of us singing the house down, all the while getting some pretty disgruntled looks from the few, sober customers at the other end of the bar.

Me and my big mouth…

Monday 15th December 2008

Me and my SingStar antics have managed to earn me my spot of fame on the TV show, ‘Playr’ which was on Bravo here in the UK on December 13th.

It’s not the first time either, I was featured in Sony’s official SingStar newsletter earlier this year. Oh yes that second clip of mine also featured Caroline, Charlie, Will and Jemima.

You can see more of my SingStar videos, including the ones they’ve removed from the game, on my YouTube channel.

SingStar Fame!

Monday 4th February 2008

After some serious SingStar loving, and then later some slightly more serious SingStar hating, I’ve now returned to the SingStar loving camp.

I’ve been given a mention on the Official SingStar newsletter!

I like to think I’ve dug a little hole for myself in the SingStar online Community, so I’m pleased to see that my videos have been recognised by the official SingStar team.

Still - I’m looking forward to improvements. The SingStore is still lacking in updates, the ratings system doesn’t work most the time and I have not been able to post a comment successfully since before Christmas… But thanks guys ;)

The Pains of SingStar

Saturday 12th January 2008

If you read my nonsensical blog, you might have seen my post, entitled “The Joy of SingStar”. I’d just got the game then and I was pretty excited about it, despite some of the network problems they were obviously having when the game first launched. I decided to give Sony and the developers of the game the benefit of the doubt, and bear with them on those problems.

Well I did, and now I’m not so forgiving.

SingStar launched in the UK and across other major European countries on 7th December. The game is a triumph of SingStar gameplay with new-school web 2.0 style YouTube/MySpace community features. Plus, having purchased every single PlayStation 2 iteration of SingStar, in addition to this new PlayStation 3 version, I consider myself a loyal customer.
But that loyalty has not been rewarded in any honourable way, and I find myself in a rather frustrating position of having a great new game, but one that doesn’t really do what it says on the tin.

So, here are the 3 main problems:

Network outages
The games launch week online service was a shambles. The online mode simply just didn’t work - presumably due to the volumes of users accessing the service. A call to Sonys customer service department would get you a rather patronising lesson in the basics of home networking, with no information of any real use. It was a full week before the service was useable, with a community rep on the playstation.co.uk forums finally offering some information on the network problems.
Even now though, over a month after release - the network mode of SingStar is never 100% reliable. It’ll occasionally log you out and won’t let you back in until your second or third attempt. The rating functionality of the online media now seems to work only when it wants to, and every so often it’ll lock up when you’re trying to quit a video, only freeing itself if you quit back to the main menu. It’s frustrating and it needs patching.

The SingStore isn’t getting updated
In 2007 we were promised the back catalogue of songs to download from the SingStore. Nearer to the games release date, a press release went back on that and said that the back catalogue would be build up over time. But this has not been well communicated and most people are wondering why the SingStore does not contain those 300+ songs to download. The official product page on playstation.co.uk states “Download the entire PlayStation 2 back catalogue of more than 300 songs - as well as new songs available online”. Well that’s simply not true. And frankly - it’s false advertising. Even within the game itself, some rather sloppy placeholder text may appear when online, stating “Hundreds of more songs to download”. It’s really quite shoddy.

Total lack of communication with customers
If you buy something with a fault, you normally take it back. But it’s different with SingStar. On the one hand, it works beautifully when you’re actually playing the game. On the other hand, there are the frequent online problems and the constant disappointment of not being able to download the songs which you were promised. It works, but just not perfectly. And you want it to work perfectly!
Communication could really help here. A blog post on ThreeSpeech, a press release announcing what songs are out and when, even an in-game message wouldn’t exactly be taxing - It’s really not hard to communicate these days and a simple reassurance for customers would be much appreciated. It’s poor.

Right now there are thousands of SingStar PS3 owners who want to download songs and spend money. And they get nothing in return for even asking.

I was kind of at breaking point today so I decided to make an online petition. I made an in-game video message, which read:

Unhappy with SingStar?
SingStore not available in your country?
In need of some SingStore updates?
Register your disappointment at:
www.petitiononline.com/ssps3/petition.html

...hardly rude, eh? It got one 5-star vote was removed within 15 minutes… Which kind of sums up the whole ‘communication’ issue.
I’m not the only one though. Upload your own video with a personal msg to Sony in - and it wont be there for long.

So if you’re reading this and you’re an unhappy SingStar PS3 customer, then sign the petition and maybe someone will hear it.

Let’s hope someone somewhere is actually listening…

*UPDATE*

The petition has picked up a fair amount of steam in it’s first 48 hours. With over 270 signatures it’s clear this issue is very important for SingStar customers. A few sites have started to report about the petition too, which might help see that number rise further. The rather fine PlayThree.net has just posted an item about it, and PS3 Fanboy also picked up on it earlier today.

*UPDATE*

Well a full week after the petition and I managed to get a mention on PlayThree, PS3 Fanboy, Kotaku, The Guardian and Eurogamer.

After the snowball rolled for 5 days, Sony came out on Thursday to announce that there will be improvements over coming weeks. Eurogamer covered the article and mentioned the petition as a possible cause for their announcement.
It’s good that they responded, but it shouldn’t have come to this - a petition to get news to customers. And the update to the store of a small handful of mediocre songs isn’t exactly amazing, but at least it’s something.

Let’s hope the service sees further improvements sooner rather than later.

The Joy of SingStar

Sunday 9th December 2007

2 days ago, SingStar for the PS3 was finally released. I can honestly say it's the most fun I've had with a console game in years. The Singing part of SingStar is still as good as it ever was, only this time with a lusher GUI and slick, simple menu systems; combined with a built-in easy to use SingStore for downloads - it's pretty much perfect.

But the cherry on the cake are the community features. As you play the game, with the PSeye (a web cam) plugged in, SingStar will automatically record media for you like photos, videos and audio. This is great, as you can then save them and embarrass yourself at a later date showing off you SingStar party shenanigans. But go to 'My SingStar online' and you'll be able to upload those, where people can then rate them or comment on them via your MySpace-style profile. It's all utter, utter genius.

The built in SingStar community features, as far as I know - are unrivalled in any other game. They're just awesome. My SingStar Online embraces the community who love SingStar so much and reward them with the ultimate platform for showing the world their talents (or non-talents).

I've just spent the morning making chin-videos of singles by R.E.M, Blink 182, and er, that song 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. Not to mention, donning an Afro-wig and using my Rock Band props to jump around like a raving idiot to Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis. Around the time I posted this, I had 2 videos in the top 10, rated 4.5 stars!

SingStar PS3 is an absolute triumph and will be keeping thousands of people entertained for many years to come. It was worth the wait!

Oh and a big shout out to the guy with a beard dressed up as Macy Gray. You ROCK!

SingStar 90’s Tracklist with audio samples

Friday 29th June 2007

The tracklist for the latest SingStar game has just been released. Suffice to say - it's amazing! This for me is by far the best SingStar tracklist yet... (Some of the tracks might change for Europe, but this New Zealand list is feeding my desire for news).

SingStar just get's better and better. Looking forward to the PS3 version due out on 27th July too - and I'm expecting these tracks to be available for download.