IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Just Dance Sells Over 1 Million Copies in U.S.

Posted April 16, 2010 by James Brightman

While Ubisoft's more hardcore-focused Wii game Red Steel 2 saw a very lackluster debut in March with just 50,000 copies sold, the publisher's more casual oriented approach to the Wii has been working wonderfully with Just Dance. Similar to Konami's DDR franchise, Just Dance enables up to four people to follow on-screen choreographed moves set to classic dance tracks. Following the March NPD data, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter noted that the game sold another 236,000 units during the month, bringing its total in the U.S. to more than a million sold. 

Ubisoft previously announced at the end of March that the game had surpassed 2 million sold worldwide since its debut last November. “The consumer response to Just Dance has been overwhelming,” said Tony Key, svp sales and marketing at Ubisoft, U.S. at the time. “With Just Dance’s success we’ve seen a renewal of the music video game genre, as this is truly a game that is accessible and enjoyable for everyone.”

Contrasting the relative success and failure of Just Dance and Red Steel 2 really does reinforce the notion that casual games are what primarily sell on the Wii, and with data like this Ubisoft and other publishers will only continue to bring more casual fare to Nintendo's platform, essentially abandoning core efforts.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.