MTV: Dance Central is the first true dancing game

Forget Dance Dance Revolution and Just Dance, because Dance Central is the industry’s first ‘true’ game of
its genre.

That’s according to MTV Games, the publisher behind the Kinect launch title.

The Harmonix-developed music game has garnered plenty of press attention since its E3 reveal, which has delighted MTV’s senior VP of electronic games and music Paul DeGooyer.

It is the first true dance game,” he told MCV.

We are very pleased because it is getting a lot of attention – perhaps the lion’s share of attention of the day one games for Kinect.

It is one of those amazing situations. Kinect was introduced to the world on the day we happened to have The Beatles on stage with the Microsoft team. And when we started working with the device, the technology was already working tremendously well. So we were able to say: ‘We can make the first true dance game, that isn’t a waving-the-wand or stomping-on-the-mat game.’

I’ve read game previews calling Dance Central important. That is not something that entered our minds when making it – we just wanted it to be fun.

If you think about the global addressable audience for music, dancing is almost universal.

From an audience standpoint Dance Central sits adjacent to Rock Band and is an important next step for us.”

DeGooyer also talked up Microsoft’s controller-less tech.
When people actually see Kinect in action, it is startling how well it works,” he said.

If you think about the central benefit of that technology – where you don’t need to hold a controller – what better way to introduce it than through dance?”