Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone Review

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(More customer reviews)First thing's first: On 9/25/2009, an update was released to enable functionality of this microphone with all Rock Band games (thus, previous reviews mentioning that issue are now moot). I can confirm that the mic now does "work" with all Rock Band games.
However, the functionality of this microphone is utterly horrid (with the Rock Band games). In short: there is a very noticeable lag when singing into the microphone. The lag causes you to hear an echo when singing in game and causes your timing and pitch to go out of whack - making it near impossible to play songs on harder skill levels. In order to confirm that there was definitely an un-fixable issue with the wireless microphone, I did a little test and played a specific song on both the stock/corded and wireless microphones (both multiple times). Each time, I got double (sometimes triple) the score with the stock/corded microphone. It appears that the lag introduced by the wireless microphone is throwing off the timing, and it may have an issue with the pitch as well (however, I can't confirm the latter).
Let me stop for a second and state that I have exhausted all avenues of trying to correct this problem. I've tried calibrating the audio/video lag in the Rock Band settings, and I've tried switching audio sources (from TV to receiver). This lag issue is a result of a poor wireless connection between the microphone and the game console - meaning that no in-game setting can fix the issue. It should also be noted that numerous users on the Rock Band forums are complaining about this very same issue with both the wireless microphone and the "Lips" microphones.
Is this something that can be corrected through a future update? doubtful. First of all, the issue is likely hardware related. If there is just a laggy connection between the microphone and the xbox, then no software can fix that. Further, it took about 8 months since introduction for Rock Band to issue this update (on 9/25) so I highly doubt that their development team is going to jump to fix this particular issue. Plus, the microphone still "functions" - it's just a much worse experience than using the corded microphone.
So in conclusion, I absolutely recommend against purchasing this microphone. At $50, you're paying a lot of money to remove the wire from your existing microphone. If the thing doesn't work just as well as your corded mic, it's certainly not worth $50. Also, if you're really into getting high scores through the vocal sections, you will encounter nothing but frustration with the timing issues. Personally, I rarely even sing and I couldn't deal with the lag and the echo, so I know that it'll really irritate the hard core singers.
If you absolutely must go "all wireless" with your Rock Band setup, I'd advise you to wait and see if Rock Band officially announces a fix. If not, make sure you have an easy means to return the mic in the event that the lag affects you.
Happy gaming!

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The Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone lets you sing and talk with certain Xbox games that support the Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone.

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Lips Number One Hits Bundle Review

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(More customer reviews)While the original "Lips" game had several issues, they were forgivable since it was the first game in the series; however, like the previous reviewer I am pretty unhappy about the 2nd installment of this franchise. I just want to make a couple things clear for anyone who has not yet purchased this game, especially if you already own the first game.
1. Despite being a "4-Player" game, only 2 people can sing - So don't buy the game thinking that 4 people can sing. The problem if you own the original Lips is that you already have 2 wireless mics and Microsoft doesn't currently offer a standalone version of this game. You need to pay a premium price for the bundle, only to have an extra mic that you can't even use.
2. If you own the original Lips and want to sing songs from the original game, you need to switch discs even if you have the original game installed on your hard drive. Then after you're done with that song, you have to reinsert the Lips:NOH disc. If you want to sing 2 songs consecutively from the original Lips game, you would still need to reinsert Lips:NOH and the insert Lips again! Not only this, but sometimes the game will freeze during the whole process.
3. As of 10/30/2009 most of the downloaded songs from the original games are now working, but there are a couple songs that do not work.
Overall this game is a slight improvement on the original, but if you own the original you may want to wait until Microsoft works out some of the kinks and/or until the release a standalone version, because you won't be able to use the extra mic and this game is definitely not worth $60.


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Lips is the only singing game offering wireless motion sensitive microphones and the ability to sing from your own collection of DRM-free songs

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Lips: Party Classics Review

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(More customer reviews)This is probably the best of the Lips offerings thus far for overall singable/fun music. A good selection of songs from 60's, 70', 80's, 90's and 00's. Most of the songs have the original videos which is cool, especially of you grew up in the 80's with MTV. Some of the oldest songs (60's and some 70's) do not have videos- presumaby because they didn't have videos then! In those cases Lips plays still images of the Artists in a slideshow-same as with previous versions.
There was no song listing on Amazon or Xbox's Lips's product page..so here it is...
Lips Party Classics 40 Songs
1.What's Up ~4 Non Blondes
2.Black Velvet ~ Alannah Myles
3.Rehab ~ Amy Winehouse
4.Doctor Jones ~ Aqua
5.Love Shack ~ The B-52's
6.Let's Get It Started ~ The Black Eyes Peas
7.Word Up ~ Cameo
8.Tubthumping ~ Chumbawumba
9.Rhythm of the Night ~ Debarge
10.Groove Is In The Heart ~ Deee-Lite
11.I Touch Myself ~ Divinyls
12.American Pie ~ Don McLean
13.Son Of A Preacher Man ~ Dusty Springfield
14.I Want To Know What Love Is ~ Foreigner
15.I Will Survive ~ Gloria Gaynor
16.Laid ~ James
17.You're Beautiful ~ James Blunt
18.Rock and Roll All Nite ~ Kiss
19.Sweet Home Alabama ~ Lynyrd Skynyrd
20.She Will Be Loved ~ Maroon 5
21.To Be With You ~ Mr. Big
22.These Boots Are Made For Walking ~ Nancy Sinatra
23.True Faith ~ New Order
24.Live Is Life ~ Opus
25.When A Man Loves A Woman ~ Percy Sledge
26.Every Rose Has Its Thorn ~ Poison
27.Brass In Pocket ~ The Pretenders
28.Shinny Happy People ~ R.E.M.
29.I'm Too Sexy ~ Right Said Fred
30.Addicted To Love ~ Robert Palmer
31.Kiss Me ~ Sixpence None The Richer
32.Wannabe ~ The Spice Girls
33.Friday I'm In Love ~ The Cure
34.My Sharona ~ The Knack
35.Unchained Melody ~ The Righteous Brothers
36.I Think We're Alone Now ~ Tiffany
37.It's Not Unusual ~ Tom Jones
38.Red Red Wine ~ UB40
39.Y.M.C.A ~ Village People
40.Is This Love ~ Whitesnake


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Grab a mic and ring in the new decade with "Lips: Party Classics"! The latest title in the "Lips" singing franchise that features the songs everyone loves to sing, exclusively for Xbox 360. A first for the franchise, "Lips: Party Classics" will work with popular USB microphones for even more singing flexibility, such as the ones that come packaged with most "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" titles.

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Lips Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm a big Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero fan. Lips is a pretty good first try. The songs are pretty good but the selection could be a little bigger. Also, some of the songs are really nice to listen to, but they're hard to sing in that a lot of the songs have choppy, quick phrasing. Almost feels like you're rapping to some of the songs instead of doing melody.
I wish they copied the above games more in terms of singing. I'll use karaoke Revolution as an example. As you sing, it's very easy to see the words as well as what pitch you're singing at because they have an easy to see arrow and if you notice that you need to sing higher or lower you can adjust. This is all while still being easy to see the words to the songs.
But on Lips, the words are totally separate from the pitch bar. So if you follow the words, it's hard to see the pitch bar unless you have fabulous peripheral vision. And if you follow the pitch bar, you better know the words beforehand. Plus, you see the glowing light of what pitch you're at but it's not as easy to follow as the arrow you see in Karaoke Revolution or Rock Band or Guitar Hero.
They make up for this fault by taking away all of the game aspect. there's no chance to fail. There's no difficulty level to choose. There's no computer audience to boo. So it feels like a karaoke machine rather than a game. But you don't get that sense of accomplishment the other games give where you feel like you match that pitch bar and feel like a singer.
They should also give you options of how the text and pitch bar scroll like in the other games. The best scrolling is Karaoke Revolution and Rock Band. Pretty each to read the text and pitch bar.
Guitar Hero/Band Hero is bad at scrolling text. But it offers a static mode that is really good too. Lips is like a combination of the two but it's not as good as either mode individually.
I'll be honest, I bought it for the wireless mics, not the game. The mics are really cool. They have glowing lights that change color. And the colors sync up to the music. the setup for the mics is much harder than it should be. trust me, you won't get it the first time or rather, you won't be sure you got it or not until you start the game. there's very little visual indication that it's been properly set up. And it's hard to turn off the controllers too. Because the same action (hold down the button on the bottom of the mic) does 3 different things. You need to do it twice to setup the mic. but you also do it to turn off the mic. so sometimes, you want to turn it off and then you accidentally you put it in pairing mode. when I thought the mic was off, it was on.
in terms of the sound, I liked my mics for Karaoke Revolution more even though they were wired. the sound was just more natural. the sound coming out of these wireless mics seemed a little artificial. almost a tinny quality. and they were not as good at filtering noise.
also, you can use the mics as instruments by shaking them to simulate various instruments like tamborine, etc. but again, there was a lag to when you shook the mic to when it played the sound so if you shake according to the music, it'll sound really off sync with the music.
i love the feature of how you can join a song just by shaking the mic. and the tilt features of the mic are gimmicky but is hilarious in a group situation when both singers raise up the mic in tandem.
Also, there seemed to be a delay between when you sing into the mic and when it comes out the game. but after playing around with the game, I got a downloaded update to the game from MS and it included a cool sync tool. and it's by far the easy calibration tool I've ever used for a music game. You just put up the microphone to the TV speaker while it's running and after a few seconds, it calculates the delay.

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Take to a whole new stage with Lips, a new music franchise for Xbox 360. Lips offers wireless motion-sensitive microphones and the ability to sing from your own music collection of DRM-free songs. Start channeling your favorite pop star because it's you, your friends and most important your music that turns Lips into the ultimate party experience.Keiichi Yano, celebrated developer behind some of the industry's most beloved rhythm games, brings his vision of collaborative and social musical entertainment to Lips. The interactive motion-sensitive microphones make your party rock all night long and encourages players to toss apprehensions out the window and join the party.Features:
Two wireless interactive microphones - Featuring interactive motion sensors and lights, the microphones respond to singers' actions and can be used as percussion accompaniments. With the freedom and encouragement provided by the wireless microphones, everyone can live their singing dreams in style.
The best music - Lips includes a diverse selection of songs, including your favorite blasts from the past such as "Bust a Move" by Young MC, as well as new songs from breakout artists such as "Mercy" by Duffy and "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John.
Sing your music collection - Lips allows people to sing along with friends to music from their personal collections.
Play along - Using the standard Xbox 360 controller, up to two people will be able to join the fun and choose from a variety of percussion accompaniment to play along with the music in Lips. By placing control of various tambourines, claps and of course the ubiquitous cowbell at the fingertips of anyone with a controller, creating a social entertainment experience for friends, co-workers and kids alike.
Constant flow of new music - From the songs that will come with the game, to your own music collection and the ability to download new tracks from Xbox LIVE Marketplace, Lips will continually provide new music to bring people together and keep the party going.
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Disney Sing It: High School Musical 3 Senior Year Review

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(More customer reviews)4.0 out of 5 stars Great for HSM Fans! (and not just tweens...), April 15, 2009
By A. W. McCary "shopaholic and travel addict" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
4.0 out of 5 stars
I'm a 24-year-old fan of all things musical, including the High School Musical movies. I previously purchased the original High School Musical Sing It for Wii (the one with music from the first and second movies) and was disappointed by the lame graphics and difficult menus... but I still couldn't resist this game when I saw it.
This game is definitely an improvement over the last one! (I plan on ditching my old game completely.) You get to sing along to the actual footage from the movies, and I like the menus much better. All in all I find it to be more user-friendly than the past game, and it has different levels for singing (Easy, Normal, Hard), which is great for beginners. It also allows you to choose which character part you wish to sing by name, rather than having to guess which characters are "Part 1" and "Part 2" in the old game. I thoroughly enjoy this, and went through at least half the songs the first time I played it.
I gave it four stars because I would really like to see an opportunity to download more songs. Wii is a great platform for party/get-together games, and a good karaoke game utilizing the Wii connectivity feature to stream or download songs would be a great thing. Also, I would like to see wireless microphones, because I feel like there's an audio delay between what I see on my HDTV and what I sing... if it had a calibration feature like Guitar Hero, that would improve it tremendously in terms of accuracy.
I may be an "older" fan of the Disney HSM franchise, but I think this would be really fun for kids too, especially if you put it on level "Easy" and just let them rock out!

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Disney Sing It! is a new video-based karaoke game that features a mix of popular fan-faves and the hottest new Disney talents. Available this holiday, the first game in this rockin new franchise comes with a Logitech microphone and features songs and videos from Disney Channels summer blockbuster,Camp Rock, along with other Disney favorites, including Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana and theHigh School Musicalmovies. With the microphone, players can belt out todays chart topping tunes and have a blast along with their friends and Disney stars! USA. Rated E for Everyone.

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