Masaya Matsuura just finished a really great address here at GO3. Called (give me a minute) "While waiting to cross, an airplane flies over the boxy heads: the inspiration of music on game development and its advancement into the future", it had rhythm action and dancing robots. I know. Perfect.

Admittedly, some of the stuff went a little over my head, as I'm not a music guy, but on the whole it was an interesting talk on how important music is to games, how it needs to be more important and what games can become when they stop treating music like the poorer cousin to graphics.

Highlights were his ideas that if you only make music for a product then you're not a real musician, music games should have a basis in kids music (because everyone knows it and everyone loves it) and a singing, dancing Aibo which could listen to music played to it then change the melody itself, dramatically altering the tone and impact of the piece. I tell you, my heart melted.

He closed out the talk with a demo of his upcoming title Rythmica, which is due out later this year. Looks very, very basic yet very, very fun: it can play any song you want it to, and all the while letters of the alphabet are displayed on screen, jiggling away like a Windows Media Player visualisation. When a letter pops up that's in the song title, you hit the button. Basic, yes, but the letters bounce around and sway with the music, giving it a cruisey, play-it-in-the-dark-at-3am kind of feel. Luke Plunkett