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Xing puts a Wii U at the heart of its costly karaoke machine
Sure, we've seen game consoles modified for use beyond their original purpose, but this apparatus turns things up a notch. Pictured above is the Joysound Festa, a mobile entertainment system powered by the Wii U's hardware and software. Built by Japanese karaoke machine maker Xing, this beastly console mod is controlled from the system's Gamepad and includes the gracelessly named Nintendo x Joysound Wii Karaoke U. Pre-loaded with 90,000 songs, this party starter also ships with a set of dance, exercise, yoga and brain training videos. Already reaching for your wallet? You should know that this unique setup is Japan-only, and headed to hotels and nursing homes at a hefty price of 1,580,000 yen (around $15,884). At that price, it may take around 25 years until we see one of these bad boys up for grabs on eBay.
Safa Xing LED features MP3 playback, 27 pixel resolution
Safa is a Korean firm that has put out quite a few forgettable DAPs in its day, and while this one isn't going to win any awards for technological advancement, it does look like "fun," for whatever that's worth. The Xing LED is a none-too-shabby 12mm thin and boasts 12 hours of playback time on a single charge. The company fails to mention little things like storage capacity and file format support, but that ain't why we're here: the face of the device features 27 LEDs that can be either programed to display the icon of your choice or used for a rousing game of Rock / Paper / Scissors. Sort of makes that Zune HD of yours look like overkill, eh? Price and availability yet to be announced.
IBM and Xing team up for high-end wireless karaoke controller
We're not going to lie -- we're pretty dang awesome at karaoke. Unfortunately, our superstardom is often hampered by ghetto setups in the various K-town karaoke bars we frequent, so we don't always get our chance to shine. IBM and Xing have joined forces to help solve this problem, and came up with the Kyoku NAVIs and NAVI II wireless controllers, which allow you to search through thousands of songs right from the device, without having to lug out those lame songbooks. The device can operate in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English, and can even be used to order food and drinks from the bar while you're busy singing your heart out to top 40 hits of the 80's and 90's. The controllers are WiFi based, and can search the IBM-powered song databases in all sorts of nifty ways. They'll be headed to Japan this November, so if you've really got to get your song on, and aren't looking forward to flipping through a 3-ring binder to track down that certain Bowie fave, you might want to head over before you miss all the fun.
