Open Labs set word that the company’s NeKo and MiKo keyboard workstations will be played during Prince’s Superbowl performance Sunday, February 4th. Morris Hayes and Renato Neto, the renowned groove-funk keyboardists with Prince’s New Power Generation, or NPG, band, will play the new Open Labs Gen3 MiKo and NeKo during the halftime performance.

“Prince is one of the most technically demanding artists working today, and the Super Bowl is one of the largest telecasts in the world, so we are delighted to have such a grand stage on which to debut the Gen3 MiKo and NeKo instruments,” said Victor Wong, chairman of Open Labs.

Introduced earlier this month at the Winter NAMM conference in Anaheim, California, the Gen3 MiKo and NeKo are the first line of keyboard workstations to incorporate a Windows PC-based architecture and are now the first musical instruments to use Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

“The Core 2 Duo processor line enables faster real-time operations, and we can’t think of a more demanding real-time situation than live musical performance. The Open Labs team provides a great example of the innovation that is being brought to music creation,” said Diane Bryant, vice president in the Digital Enterprise Group, Intel. “We believe that the convergence of the PC workstation and the music synthesizer keyboard will support creativity for new generations of composers and performers.”

“The combination of Intel’s latest processors and our future migration to Windows Vista ensure that Open Labs instruments continue to offer musicians and producers sustainable world-class performance without peer,” continued Wong.

The Open Labs MiKo and NeKo Gen3 keyboards are the first portable digital music and internet media creation systems that combine the power of Windows PC architecture, a large-format touchscreen interface, and internet connectivity in a compact, user-friendly instrument.

The Gen3 series enable users to record up to 140 tracks of 24-bit audio; play up to 500-note polyphony, and support up to 300 plug-ins in a single instrument.

The Super Bowl is annually the nation’s highest-rated TV program. More than 141 million viewers watched last year’s game in the U.S. Super Bowl XLI will be broadcast to a potential worldwide audience of 1 billion in more than 230 countries and territories.