SingStar Gets One Up On Rock Band, Guitar Hero

SingStar is the ugly stepsister of the music genre. It’s only loved in one territory, it’s one-dimensional, its soundtrack has limited appeal. But there’s one area Sony’s karaoke series is trumping the competition.

And that’s in its digital shopfront. While Rock Band and Guitar Hero are stuck with antiquated stores, accessible only via crude in-game portals or a console’s online store, Sony have today launched the “SingStar Viewer”, a PS3 application that lets users browse online videos and purchase songs directly from the XMB, without having to access either the game or the PlayStation Store.

For SingStar users, it’s mighty useful, both as a shopfront and as a community hub. For everyone else, it’s useful too, if only so you can complain to Harmonix and Activision that their respective band games could do with something similar.