AdME, the mobile marketing arm of SONiVOX, a provider of sound products and technology, announced the release of GuitarStar, a next-generation, music-driven mobile game, available on AT&T's wireless network.
Using an original "beat-matching" technology, GuitarStar synchronizes visual movements with the beat of the underlying musical soundtrack to amplify a player's gaming engagement.
"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," explained Peter Eggleston, CEO of AdME, in a statement.
GuitarStar is the initial application in SONiVOX's music driven Mobile Entertainment (mdME) product suite. 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 that automatically compensate for the audio differences on each individual handset.