Originally written on Playstation Underground SingStar forum:

So there’s been a little bit of talk out there about whether or not there’ll be Asian songs on the SingStar Store. Personally, I’ve always thought that it would be a great idea because arguably, karaoke as an activity is much more popular among Asian people.

Over the weekend, I got to see this in action with SingStar Pop and a bunch of people, mostly Chinese, both guys and girls. After the Houston / Jazz game, someone suggested karaoke, and everyone seemed pretty excited. Usually, at this point they’d all crowd into my roommate’s room and sing from his massive collection of Chinese karaoke videos, but since I had just gotten Singstar, we booted that up to try out. We played around with duets for a while. After about 3 songs, I could tell that people were getting bored. Pretty soon, pretty much everyone just left.

Now, this might seem natural to some of you. Most people don’t like to sing in front of others, and if there was no alcohol involved, of course people were bored.

But, I’ve seen these people stay up till 4 in the morning singing Chinese karaoke. Often.

I asked one of them about it and he said, “Yeah, if the songs were Chinese songs, no one would have left.” I agreed by saying, “Arguably, karaoke is more popular with Asian people,” to which he replied, “Arguably? No. That’s just fact. Karaoke is our thing. Just look at our events. Everytime we get together, karaoke is what we do. We have karaoke contests, karaoke parties. After dinner, we sing karaoke.”

So there you have it. A little experience I had over the weekend. Anyone agree? Disagree? What do you think the chances of them making the SingStar Store international are?