Xbox Karaoke game will charge by the hour

Karaoke for Xbox 360 will have an unusual business model: you'll buy blocks of times during which you can stream the music library.

Apart from being surprisingly popular, music games have always made you purchase the content outright, either via the original title or in genre-themed updates.

But Karaoke for Xbox 360 is going to do things a little differently. You'll have access to a library of 8000 streaming karaoke tracks, but only in blocks of two, six or 24 hours.

So, if you're having a few friends over for a karaoke night (do people really do that?) you'd just unlock the two hours with some Microsoft points. A bigger party might require six hours. We're yet to come up with a scenario where one might require a full 24 hours of karaoke access, but we're sure it exists.

Karaoke for Xbox will also include SmartGlass integration, letting you queue up tracks via your phone or tablet.

We haven't seen any actual numbers for how many Microsoft points the time blocks will cost, but this certainly seems like a novel business model that suits the games format rather well.