SingStar, anyone? Judging by more than 15 million sales and more than 2.2 million song downloads, the answer is yes. Microsoft wants in on the action, just as it does with EyeToy (You're in the Movies) and Buzz (Scene It?), and so it has enlisted respected Japanese music game developer iNiS to create an alternative that matches the Sony game almost word for word and hopefully builds on it.
The result is a karaoke experience fundamentally indivisible from Sony's vision of how it should work - right down to an outright refusal to use the 'k' word anywhere near it. Players of Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band will recognise the formula too; your singing is rated according to pitch and timing rather than exact notes. However, Lips also aims to outdo the competition by celebrating and rewarding vibrato, rather than punishing it as deviation, and although it often denies you points for brief and low starting points, the way you react to sudden changes in a song's pitch is marked with greater sympathy.
