PS3 Fanboy

We know you've all been wondering who's going to be replacing Paulina Bozek as head of the SingStar franchise after she quit to join Atari. Finally, we've got an answer. Dave Ranyard has been appointed as the franchise's head and leaves his previous position of creative services manager to Dan Bardino. We'll be intrigued to see what changes, if any, will be made by this wee resuffle. SingStar continues to release decent DLC every other week and with SingStar ABBA and SingStar Disney on the horizon before Christmas the series is the strongest it's ever been.

Looks like the French games company is targeting proven Sony stars. Their high-profile acquisition of former Worldwide Studios giant Phil Harrison took the industry by surprise. Many of us were shocked to see such a successful reign at Sony Computer Entertainment move to a company with a track record like Atari.

The exodus may be far from over, though. Today, it's been revealed that the gorgeous Paulina Bozek, creative director of Sony's popular SingStar franchise, is also finding a new home at Atari. She will head a new studio, based in Hammersmith, London, that will focus on developing other mass-market games for "online-enabled devices," including PCs and consoles. "I am very excited to be joining Atari at this pivotal time for both the company and the industry," said Bozek.

Phil Harrison, Bozek's former boss at Sony, added: "This is a significant step in expanding Atari's online game development capability. Paulina is one of the industry's most respected creative leaders with an outstanding track-record of commercial and creative success and I'm delighted that she will bring her unique vision, consumer insight and proven ability for creating amazing entertainment experiences to Atari."

Speaking to Paulina Bozek, Producer of SingStar, at the PlayStation Day event we were able to gather a few details about the development team's plans for the year. High on their list is the integration of My SingStar Online, the game's online community service, with the official SingStar website. This will allow people who don't have a copy of the game to view the videos which have been uploaded by the community. Obviously this will be a huge boon, marketing-wise, as it will allow videos from the game to go viral, potentially scoring more customers.

Privacy is very important and with My SingStar Online being such a closed service right now (only accessible via the game) people see it as a safe place to put videos. When the integration with the we occurs later this year players will be given the choice to upload their videos only to the closed SingStar network or the internet. The details have yet to be ironed out, but this is a service we're very much looking forward to.

We also asked Bozek about region-specific content for Europe and the US. The SingStar team has "no interest" in exclusive content for any particular regions. Tracks will be made available worldwide as much as possible. The only thing that would prevent this is for licensing issues or censorship to get in the way. The team is committed to delivering at least 50 songs per month in Europe and America, with a SingStore update occurring every two weeks.

ThreeSpeech has conducted an interview with Paulina Bozek, Producer of SingStar, in order to find out what's going on with SingStar vol 2 and the SingStore. Thankfully, the interview answers a lot of pending questions we had after vol 2's announcement. For starters, the "Harmony Mode" will be made available for SingStar vol 1 owners who don't want to buy another disc as a free update.

As for whether vol 2's songs will be placed on the SingStore, Bozek was a little more vague, saying that "licensing music for digital distribution is a different process to that of the disc-based product. When Vol 2 is released a number of tracks from the disc-based product will also be available to buy in the SingStore." This probably means that if you want all the songs on the disc, you'll probably have to pick it up off the shelf. Unfortunately, this means there will be some disc swapping involved as Bozek states that "SingStar tracks from the disc cannot be stored on the PS3 hard drive."

As far as new songs for the SingStore goes, Sony's London Studio are aiming to add "approximately 50 songs a month to the SingStore." A decent number, but we're looking for quality over quantity, which means fewer updates like today's, please. Check out the full interview for more info on Remote Play, the SingStore and wireless mics.