With all the furore about how the Nintendo Wii has revolutionised social gaming over the past year, it's worth sparing a thought for Sony. Because through brands such as Singstar, Buzz and EyeToy, it had been opening up gaming to a wider audience for some time. Not for nothing are games such as these amongst the most popular on the PlayStation 2.

SingStar marks the first time one of them has turned up on the PS3 though, and it's a risk-free approach that Sony has taken. The core game is pretty much unchanged: you warble your way through a tune, with options for single or multiplayer, and are assessed on your performance at the end of it.

Whatever targets and rewards the game throws up are decoration around this core dynamic: this is a video game that brings karaoke to your living room, albeit in nice clothes. And lacking the dodgy music videos that infest the karaoke machine down at your local hostelry.

Because, credit where credit's due, SingStar is gleaming, and the video quality has headed north as a result of its arrival on a more powerful machine (it's HD all the way here). The game mechanic is fundamentally unchanged, and you still only get 30 official songs with the pack, but they're provided with official videos and backing tracks. It surprised us though, what with Sony's chest-beating about the capacity potential of the Blu-ray format, that only 30 songs are included by default. This initially struck us as very tight, though there is a reason for it.

Where SingStar PS3 does carve itself a separate path away from SingStar PS2 is in two new additions. One of them - and this instantly relieves you of the need to top up your song library by buying fresh instalments - is the SingStore. Here you can buy tracks individually and put together a collection of tunes you're actually interested in, rather than suffering through a dozen you couldn't give two hoots about on a retail disc. Extra tracks aren't generously priced - 99p apiece is a little too much for our liking, especially as they are old SingStar tunes thus far - but it's a convenient way to top your game up, and in time should prove to be quite a resource,.

The second addition is My SingStar, which invites you to upload videos, make friends, and basically pretend you haven't got a Facebook account that does all of that for you.

Incidentally, you can buy SingStar with the microphones for £50 (although, staggeringly, they're still wired!), or plug in your old PS2 mics and get a solus pack with just the game for much less.

This is, ultimately, an entirely competent, predictable and risk-free migration of the SingStar formula to a new platform. It's still a fine game, of course, and unrivalled in its field, and if you go in expecting what you're used to from the franchise, then that's the best way to avoid disappointment.

Nothing Earth-shattering: this is all about getting a PS2 franchise onto PS3 with the minimum of fuss. Job done.