Despite the recent troubles of the music gaming genre and dissolving of the Guitar Hero franchise, Harmonix is optimistic, as sales for its Xbox 360/Kinect game Dance Central surpass those for Rock Band 3.
"To date [Dance Central] has outperformed Rock Band 3 at retail," said Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos in an interview with video game weblog Destructoid.
"It's one of the top-selling titles for the Kinect, and the Kinect is one of the most successful products in the entire video game industry right now. So we're thrilled with how Dance Central has performed out of the gate."
As of January 2011, three months after its release, the standalone version of the controller-free dancing game had sold over 1.2 million copies in North America, according to figures provided by the NPD exclusively to Gamasutra. That number doesn't include Dance Central copies sold with Xbox 360 Kinect bundles or Kinect accessory bundles.
Despite explosive growth in the music gaming field just five years ago, the genre has suffered recently, as sales for major franchises dwindled and Activision disbanded its Guitar Hero business unit. Shortly after it was sold by Viacom to investment firm Columbus Nova, Harmonix cut 12-15 percent of its staff to meet its product development plans.
Undeterred by those setbacks, Rigopolus said he's excited about this "new beginning" for Harmonix, revealing that the company's largest single development team is currently working on Dance Central, though he didn't outright admit a sequel. He also said the company has "significant resources" devoted to Rock Band in the near term and far term.
"We also have significant resources devoted to a number of new IPs and new game concepts in development as well. So there's actually quite a lot of work underway here on a diverse variety of projects," the CEO added.
Somehow, I don't know why, but it's hard for me to fathom that there's more people that would buy a dancing game over a game that supports singing, drums, keyboard, bass and guitar.
Plus the DLC song base is the largest of any music game. PLUS RB3 is multi-platform.
Dancing is probably a more universal form of expression and probably translates better across many cultures.
Screwing up in these modern dance games (excluding experiences like DDR) is also more entertaining for all parties involved. The game gives us license to be foolish...again, something that is very universal.
Too many guitar games have been made the past few years, and I think people are sick of them at the moment. I think Harmonix should lay low for a while with Rock Band and then revitalize the genre.
So what, a game that requires bulky expensive peripherals is being outsold by a game that requires a peripheral being sold at retail in a bundle with the console and receiving a massive advertising blitz?
I still think that Harmonix should have put Dance Central on the Wii and PS3. They could have got a lot more sales. Dance games are doing great on the Wii with Just Dance, MJ , and Zumba games. I think Dance Central still would have sold well with those titles because it has a different music selection to dance to.
The PS3 will not have any dance games for Move that I know of besides the MJ game that is coming out. Dance Central could have been the first for Kinect and Move.
Dance Central is a good "full body" title, something that can't really be replicated on the Move or Wii. The Move can approximate things from one's body shape but I think there are issues with that tech, as I figure Singstar Dance would have been more comparable to DC.
Plus the DLC song base is the largest of any music game. PLUS RB3 is multi-platform.
Screwing up in these modern dance games (excluding experiences like DDR) is also more entertaining for all parties involved. The game gives us license to be foolish...again, something that is very universal.
DC:RB with Angus Young, Pete Townshend, and more!
Colour me negative-surprised.
The PS3 will not have any dance games for Move that I know of besides the MJ game that is coming out. Dance Central could have been the first for Kinect and Move.