Microsoft is hoping it's found a new way to monetize games on its Xbox 360: charging players by the hour.
The company
announced this week a new
Karaoke application that, much like a karaoke bar, charges participants by the hour for unlimited access to a library of over 8,000 songs.
While it's not exactly a major shift for the company (don't expect a pay-as-you-go
Halo anytime soon), it does follow Microsoft's recent trend of finding new ways to monetize the Xbox 360. The company is running its
first free-to-play game, and a recent pilot program resulted in a nationwide rollout of a
steeply discounted console with an upfront cost offset by a two-year monthly fee contract similar to how many mobile phones are sold.
Karaoke's song library comes by way of a partnership with The Karaoke Channel. The game is developed by iNiS, the Japanese studio also responsible for Microsoft's earlier karaoke game,
Lips.
More on the
Play XBLA blog.
