The Zumba titles rely on the high-voltage personalities of its instructors, some of whom have built devoted followings. I wish I had this game when I was a kid.” “The game has a party vibe that just seemed perfect for us and our fans,” said band singer Fergie, whose mother took her to musicals when she was a little girl.
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Members of the Grammy-winning pop group Black Eyed Peas spent a full day in motion capture suits, going through more than 300 dance moves for the Black Eyed Peas Experience dancing game. To keep the attention of this fickle demographic, dance game publishers are including celebrity tie-ins. It also plays well with the dance shows on TV.” “Parents love to buy these games because they love seeing their kids get off the couch and be active. marketing and sales for Ubisoft Entertainment, the French publisher of the Just Dance franchise, which has sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S. “We’re bringing new consumers into the market,” said Tony Key, head of U.S. Plus, NPD’s numbers show, the majority of players are teens or younger.
“That jar is a little easier to open now,” Malambri half-joked. Before that, she played Dance Central for months. Nearly 8 out of every 10 players of dance games are female, according to NPD.įor Lisa Malambri, a 27-year-old fashion model who lives in Valley Village, playing Just Dance 3 every morning since she got the game a month ago has toned up her muscles. Unlike those other game categories, the dance game genre appeals mainly to younger female players, pulling in a demographic that hasn’t always played video games. 31, compared with the prior year, making it the fifth-largest video game genre - after shooter, action, adventure and role-playing games - according to NPD. sales of dancing titles rose 326% during the 12 months that ended Oct. “But it’s been two years now, and I’ve been wrong the whole time.” “I thought it would die after the first year, because it felt like a fad to me,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. Until recently, game reviewers and analysts dismissed dancing games as a novelty with little staying power, predicting they would last no longer than music games like Guitar Hero, which debuted to great acclaim in 2006 and within a few seasons was forgotten.
Played on Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, the game uses the console’s Kinect motion-sensing camera to track players’ body movements, scoring them on how accurately they mimic the dance routine. The fitness game boom has since given way to dancing games, starting in November 2009 with Dance Central, a title developed by Harmonix and published by MTV Network. The dancing genre - like the exercise craze that drove videocassette sales in the 1980s - branched out of the popularity of fitness games beginning in 2008 with Nintendo Co.'s Wii Fit, which reintroduced the aerobic step platform in high-tech fashion to millions of living rooms around the world.
Total sales for the year are expected to stay flat, at best. Overall game sales rose only 3% over the same period.