Sing into your smartphone in console game "SingStar"

Karaoke franchise "SingStar" is preparing for its first outing on PlayStation 4 later this year, and will be released in tandem with a free companion app for smartphones.

The "SingStar" companion app will work on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 versions of the game, and there'll be optimizations that make it easier to share a session's best moments to Facebook or Twitter, said director Chris Bruce.

That app, developed for both iOS and Android devices, will also serve as a means of creating custom playlists.

Bruce revealed that the "SingStar" franchise, which debuted as a PlayStation 2 game on May 21, 2004, had sold 26 million copies over the course of its lifetime.

By 2007, the first PlayStation 3 exclusives had started to emerge, while 2010's "SingStar Dance" and "SingStar Guitar" looked to learn from the successful "Just Dance," "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" series.

Since then, the game has gone free-to-play as a PlayStation 3 download, with the online SingStore supplying musical content as desired.