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.
