Xbox 360 Kinect's Dance Central - This Changes Everything

Dance Central

Editor's note: Carlos thinks Dance Central for the Kinect can set the industry "on fire yet again." Would something like Dance Central entice you -- or your nongaming friends and family -- to get a Kinect? -Jason

At this year's E3, Sony aimed to "change everything." The change the company was touting and promoting was its series of Wii-like peripherals -- mainly, the Move controller and the EyeToy camera that work in concert to create that next dimension of accuracy in motion-controlled gaming.

In truth, I'm not terribly excited for either the Move or Microsoft's Kinect peripheral, but the latter does show a bit of promise that, to me, is easily attributed to one game: Dance Central.

Forget DJ Hero and, even to some extent, Dance Dance Revolution, the game that gave players but a few directional buttons to stomp on. No, Dance Central may just be the game that sets the industry on fire yet again.

The game is Harmonix's attempt at creating the next "bar game" or the next hot, mainstream product that will sell Kinect. Not to you or me, probably. But the popularity of dance shows and beat boy (aka b-boy) faceoffs on TV is indicative of the reach this game could have.

Moms, teenagers, and closet boogie maniacs alike are drawn to So You Think You Can Dance and its ilk every week, and now they can give technical dancing a try for themselves during the rest of the week.

I really had to applaud the people who manned up and hit MTV Games' Dance Central booths set up at E3, which turned plenty of nerdy media folk into dancing machines right before my eyes.

Harmonix's latest exercised the Xbox 360's Kinect capabilities -- and it worked! The game produces an avatar onscreen, and a circle pulsing at its feet indicates when your next turn. Based on your timing and body position, you earn points similar to Rock Band and Guitar Hero (with a few twists to match the new gameplay style, of course).

Failing? Your onscreen counterpart's legs start turning red as a warning. It never became too much of a game but not just a bunch of random body movements, either. From what I saw, it looked accurate and fun -- maybe more so in the privacy of your own home -- and if Harmonix and MTV Games position this correctly, it changes everything.

Now, I'm not pop music's biggest fan, but the track record of Harmonix's DLC song releases in Rock Band and MTV's capability to license the hottest tunes makes Dance Central the best-positioned game to start off a new music-genre offshoot.

Rock Band has grown -- and is still developing -- a huge library of tracks available to rock aficionados, now it's Dance Central's turn to show that it can continue that legacy in a brand-new sector of popular music that will translate to real-world clubbing scene skills -- or simply for Mom to show off that she can get down just as well as her TV idols.

Sony's "this changes everything" mantra? It's been officially redacted, and it now has a new suitor in the wake.

Tags: Move, Kinect, Dance Central, game changers

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Nick Nordstrom

August 09, 2010

As long as Dance Central lets me do the virtual Cabbage Patch, I'm sold.

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Richard Moss

Yep, this is pretty much my take on Dance Central, too.

I'm particularly interested in it as a dancer who has taught many beginners. It looks perfect for them as they can copy the on-screen moves and get immediate feedback on how they're doing. And they can build their confidence in their ability to move before going to a dance class, which is hugely intimidating for first-timers.

Gerren LaQuint Fisher

I understand the hestitation to jump on board with Kinect, but I could never understand why many in the games press don't think this won't be succesful. I don't think it's a Wii Sports game changer (being it's partially the result of the post-Wii market shift/expansion) but it's going to be big. Everytime this gets put in front of the general public and not just press, people seem to eat it up. It's not for me, but I can easily name 20 friends and co-workers that will easily want it. Do I expect it to translate into 360 sales? No. But many already have 360s or are close with people they spend time with that do. I can easily find individual and joint Kinect/Dance Central purchases within this group for this game in same way I saw for GH/RB.

Carlos Macias

August 10, 2010

The biggest hurdle for the kind of people that would make Dance Central successful is the price, unfortunately. It's likely they don't own an Xbox 360 already and will have to spend an upward of $400 for the experience the game looks to offer.

Harmonix and MTV have their work cut out for them. I just hope they manage to make it work just as they did for Rock Band by putting some money into a great ad campaign that gets people playing something new.

While the hurdle Carlos speaks of is real, I believe it's also vastly overstated. People talk about Dance Central with a misunderstanding of two things I think. One, people tend to speak too much of Kinect like the Wii because of obvious similarities. But the Wii was trying to penetrate the market from the beginning. Kinect's on a system that's already well-penetrated the market and not just in the college dorms of 20-yr-old males that living with "the boys." If we're the believe Mircrosoft's self-reported 40 million 360s in households worldwide figure, I think it may be a little easier than some would think to pull the percentage to make the game successful. Blockbuster sales status maybe another argument altogether, however. So while cost will be an issue without a doubt, I don't think it will require as many $400 full 360 system purchases as a barrier as many paint it. Part of that I think comes from really pigeonholing and stereotyping the audience. I think there may be more interest in this sort of game than we think because of the habit of making certain gamers mutually exclusive audiences.

I've plenty of experience of that dealing with so-called "core gamers" as a sports gamer. With people that pigeonhole people that play sports games as guys that only buy 3 EA Sports games and may an FPS game all year as to oppose to what many are. Whom probably were baffled former baseball player Curt Shilling decided to start a game company to make RPGs being somewhat unaware to the fact baseball fans, much like RPG fans, are in many cases people that are giant stat junkies. Kat Bailey spoke recently on Active Time Babble of how that connect was partial responsible for her getting into baseball being uninterested in the sport before that realization.

I'd be careful not to underestimate the audience of gamers that are both like to dance (even some of the goofy stuff in the club that inspired Goodie Mob's "They Don't Dance No Mo'") and play the games many people in the online community like to associate with only themselves. Many in the online "hardcore" community often is less representative than the general population than it would like to think. There's no way the industry could have ever grown to what it's become, particularly over the past 10-15 year on just community nor it as some overwhelming majority. And that online community is vastly diverse in itself. I'd exercise some caution in how narrowly we might define the kind of people that would play this game.

As I said before, I don't think DC will be Wii Sports or Rock Band. It has an outside shot of being that successful but I don't think it gets on that level. But it will do just fine. It's the least of my concerns of the initial wave of Kinect or Move games.