How important is this release to Nordic Games?We Sing will be Nordic Games’ biggest release to date, a fruition of our ambitions as a publisher of peripheral-based games. Our first games helped us set-up processes and channels. That stage has been successfully completed and now we are ready to bring AAA-quality titles to the consumer marketplace. Nordic Games does have a long-term strategy for We Sing, but I don’t really want to get caught up in details of our future plans until We Sing has launched. Nordic Games is adopting the Apple approach of telling people when the product is ready… when the product actually is ready.
What are your expectations for We Sing?
Nordic Games wants to keep its feet on the ground about We Sing, but deep down we are extremely excited. We have briefed our distribution partners and they are all looking forward to the release of the product this winter. I wholeheartedly believe We Sing will be a hit. The quality and mix of the music together with the game’s ease of use will be key factors to the success.
How important are the partnerships/deals you have made?
Relationships with all the leading music companies are hugely important. This is the only way that you can get a mixture of good modern artists and quality back catalogue songs. We are at the beginning of a long relationship with major music publishers like EMI, Warner, Universal and many of the hip independent record labels, too. We do not have any particular exclusive partnerships, preferring to just do good business with each of party in the way of solid commercial deals. By having the door open to these leading players you get flexibilty, variety and access to the best artists... Ultimately that delivers songs that are simply great to sing.
Nordic Games has approached the song list featured on We Sing from an aspect of delivering a music set that was varied and had "something for everyone". No stone was unturned in terms of researching music and customer likes. Hopefully this is reflected in the fantastic music selection. It was a tough choice which songs to include, there are so many great ones out there.
But Nordic Games is realistic too... SingStar is the benchmark in Europe for this genre and the level of thought that they have applied to their games is astounding. It would be a compliment to be compared to them, but in reality this is the beginning of the We Sing journey, and the product will continue to develop over time.
What will make We Sing stand out from other titles in the genre?
We Sing has one major USP over any other Karaoke games in the market. Namely, it has the ability to plug in four microphones and four friends sing together. This is the most important aspect of We Sing. The name says it all – it’s about friends having fun and singing together. The game has been designed specifically for the Nintendo Wii and will be developed exclusively for the platform for the long term. Nordic Games has no interest to venture onto SingStar’s territory, or Microsoft’s for that matter. We Sing features original music videos, and quality artists, but the thought, effort and research behind the music choices are another strong point. Having leading artists like Lady GaGa, Coldplay, Lily Allen, Tom Jones and Kylie Minogue also makes the product stand out from the rest of the crowd.
Pelle Lundborg, Publishing Director, Nordic Games