New SEGA Vocaloid Games

SEGA's mysterious Project 575 has now been unveiled, and it turns out that it comprises two separate games: Song Builder 575 for the PlayStation Vita, and Song Reader 575 as an app for iOS as used in Apple mobile/portable products. The latter will be out within the week, but the Builder will not be released until next year.

The idea of being able to write one's own lyrics for the Vocaloid characters to perform using their built-in voice-banks is the next logical step in using the technology within the gaming genre, so now a version of the Vocaloid software forms part of the game code so that instead of merely punching buttons in time to a pre-written song, one gets to write at least some of the words for the two (typically cute young ladies) performers to sing for you.

It was such an obvious concept to me, that I thought it might turn out to be a damp squib; but the demos below suggest that it could in fact have sufficient appeal to be a runaway success, especially in its home country of Japan, as it is very much in tune with their mainstream culture. Here are the (short) demos: meet Azuki and Maccha...





I don't know whether, like Project Diva F, this will one day make its way to the west in either version (or perhaps both), but with Diva blazing the trail here any time now, perhaps it might become a knock-on demand-led success here as well, one day. It would certainly be good if our characteristically violent games market leaders were to be supplanted by something that much softer....

GEEK 2013

GEEK in this context stands for Games Expo East Kent, and is an event coming to Margate next month. Last year's debut event was apparently so successful that this looks like becoming a regular annual event. I consider that to be a Good Thing!

I, of course, have the connection to Margate that I have mentioned a couple of times before: the little office the then DTI's regional office had there in the Old Town Hall, which I visited typically once or twice a year.

Thus I have a hankering to revisit the old area, which I quite liked – though I am perhaps too old now to battle it out with the young gamers of today. My own gaming is not in their league, and originates in the decades of the 'eighties and 'nineties. The world has moved on somewhat since those times...

Anyway, the event will be based at several locations in Margate, including the Winter Gardens, between 21st and 24th February 2013 (during schools' half-term).

Here is the event's promotional video...