It'll be back

Yoostar 2 built its whole world around a social experience but one vital piece of the puzzle was missing: access to the world's biggest video-sharing community, YouTube. Not any more though, as the publisher has just announced an update bringing YouTube support to the movie karaoke game.

Now you can upload your performances to the web for all to see, it should be much easier to gain plaudits for your heartfelt emoting, expanding your potential audience beyond those who own the game.

If this tempts you to pick up the game, be sure to read our Yoostar 2 review first.

Yoostar meets Youtube

LYON, FRANCE – 21 April 2011 – Yoostar’s social “movie karaoke” performance video game boosted its worldwide audience today by adding the ability for users to upload their performances directly to YouTube. Now the world can watch anyone act, ad-lib or stand-in for the greatest actors, in their most memorable roles, on the site that defined video sharing.

The move dramatically expands a social network that already unites Yoostar®2 game players on consoles with the free Yoostar Playground™ game on Facebook and YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property in December with 144.8 million unique viewers*. Through the power of Yoostar’s social video platform, viewers can access tens of thousands of Yoostar videos on the Yoostar Playground™ and YouTube without a console game. Now, with YouTube connectivity, emerging actors can share their performances directly with the largest audience of critics and fans ever assembled.

“Integrating YouTube into the Yoostar community provides unparalleled reach for users to share their performances with the world. By bringing together the three formerly separate worlds of console gaming, social networking and social video sharing we’ve taken a big step toward realising our vision: to create the world’s first social video gaming network,” said Stephanie Morgan, Vice President of Social Gaming at Yoostar Entertainment Group. “Sharing video performances with the world is fun and when there are in-game rewards and benefits, the interplay can be exhilarating. Players confident enough to face the performance-savvy YouTube community will raise their rankings, climb the worldwide leaderboard, and possibly even become a real internet star!”

In addition to the YouTube connection, Yoostar Playground on Facebook is adding several frequently requested features during the next two weeks:

· Players will be able to post performances on Facebook user walls;

· A new “boost” power up will amplify earned activity points in different scenarios so players can move up the leaderboard faster;

· The Store will alert players to fresh downloadable content as soon as it hits the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks;

· New video tutorials will help players move from beginners to pros on Yoostar 2;

· A news feed delivered directly to Facebook user pages will alert fans to everything from the latest tips and tricks, to who was seen using Yoostar or is making a meteoric rise in the standings

How it all plugs together:
Yoostar Playground is a free Facebook game and owning the console game is not required to participate. Players rate, share, comment on, and “mash-up” performances produced by Yoostar 2 console game performers. In-game activities earn points that help players grow from struggling actors to A-list celebrities. As players gain “fame,” they are awarded Badges and paid Yoobucks. Yoobucks can be used for power ups and boosts that accelerate achievements in both Yoostar Playground and Yoostar 2.

Yoostar 2 is a console game for the Kinect for Xbox 360 and the PlayStation® 3 computer entertainment system utilising the PlayStation®Eye that is played on the user’s television and connects to the Internet. It brings the magic and fun of Hollywood sets to living rooms everywhere. Yoostar 2 makes it possible for players to insert themselves into famous movie and TV scenes, starring alongside, or in place of, their favourite actors. Players choose scenes from a wide variety of movie genres; a built-in teleprompter displays actor’s lines in English, Spanish, French, Italian, or German; an outline of the original actor’s body shows players where to position themselves before the camera rolls. For added fun, performers can even toss the script and improvise.

The Yoostar Network is a growing web of interconnected social networks that link Yoostar performers across Facebook user pages, Yoostar Playground, Twitter, Yoostar.com, Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network and YouTube. The goal of the Yoostar Network is to make it easy to connect with anyone interested in social performance games regardless of where their net-presence resides.