SingStar: The Beginnings

I think the true test of that is the tie ratio, between one consumer and how many tracks they download. I'm not sure what it's quite at right now, but it was 10 a few months ago, and it's probably increasing.

But on average - you could probably find a few people that are fanatical and download hundreds - it's around 10 downloads per consumer, which is not an insignificant amount.

The whole online space is fascinating. I started in games about 12 years ago, and I guess around four years ago, around the time that YouTube came out, the thing you could see there with SingStar was people playing your game in their living-rooms.

You can't imagine that when you're working on something like Wipeout... it seems quite normal now, but actually it's amazing.

It's a user test, day in, day out. This is no longer about our perception of consumers - you can actually see them. The dads, early in the morning with the baby, because it's his turn to look after the kid, and there they are playing SingStar.

I think that was really surprising - when My SingStar Online went live we weren't really sure who'd be using it, but we were fairly confident it would be 30 year-old males... pretty much exclusively. But it wasn't that at all - it's families, people of all ages.

So many women - they've set up their PlayStation Eyes, and there they are, playing constantly.

Having that direct relationship is a fundamental step in game development. It's almost one of the biggest things I've seen.

The cool thing that happened off the back of that, the engaging with the community, is that they're now dictating more of what the content should be. Our online community took a vote as to what the PlayStation 2 SKU should be, which ended up being boy bands versus girl bands, and then they were allowed to vote on what the actual track list should contain.

Nightmare from a licensing point of view... Oh, well they've all voted for it, so it must be fine!

But to have that relationship with the consumer - that's really good.

And also the behaviour in some of the videos they make is really interesting. Sometimes they're not actually bothering to sing, they're just using the pause button. That really informs us as to what development features we should look at.

It was the inspiration of seeing people having SingStar parties on YouTube that led to the PS3 having this idea of uploading videos, but I didn't think at that point than anybody thought people would make videos with no singing in them. That's truly emergent behaviour.

And like, people dressing up in Chewbacca outfits and doing a dance to the Scissor Sisters, followed by a couple of days later somebody performing the same song dressed up as a Storm Trooper as a response.

And then somebody comes along dressed as Darth Vader and has a light sabre that they use - it's the community bouncing off each other.