August 2, 2007

Music is the New Mobile Game in Town

GuitarStar Release on AT&T Network Underscored by Original “Beat-Matching” Technology

AdME, leading provider of music-driven Mobile Entertainment (mdME) products, today announced the release of GuitarStar, a next-generation, music-driven mobile game, on the AT&T Wireless network. Using an original “beat-matching” technology, GuitarStar is the first mobile game fully capable of synchronizing visual movements with the beat of the underlying musical soundtrack in order to significantly amplify the player’s level of gaming engagement.

GuitarStar enables players to virtually "play by feel" as they attempt to capture guitar picks flying across the mobile screen. "Rather than taking their cues solely from what they see, mobile players can now use the beat's groove to guide their play the way console players do with Guitar Hero, or arcade players with Dance Dance Revolution,” explains Peter Eggleston, CEO of AdME.

GuitarStar is the initial application in SONiVOX's mdME, or “music-driven Mobile Entertainment” product suite, a project designed and developed by the company over the past two years. Though most phones are capable of reproducing synthesized audio, they are basically playback units, each with a unique combination of hardware and software that produces audio latency and inconsistency in actual playback rates.

To maintain the level of audio and visual synchronization necessary for an acceptable level of gameplay, SONiVOX has employed an interactive music library implemented as a middleware layer on top of a phone's audio drivers. This handles the complexity of managing multiple audio streams and sound content. It also facilitates the creation of audio content and gameplay information with standard software tools that can then be translated into “beat-matched” files which automatically compensate for the audio differences on each individual handset.

Originally built as a mobile entertainment application, GuitarStar has since been customized to serve as a platform to promote recording artists and consumer brands. GuitarStar's AT&T Wireless release features a number of emerging musical artists in the rock, pop and hip hop arenas, and discussions are currently underway about its deployment as a promotional platform in a wide variety of industries, from automotive to adult entertainment.

Additional AdME games such as DanceLord, featuring animatronic characters that can be choreographed on the cellular keypad, are scheduled for release in the next 6-12 months. Driven by the same “beat-matching”technology as GuitarStar, they underscore AdME's fundamental view that, “music is, indeed, the new mobile game in town.”

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