Konami Changes Kinect Dancing Focus With Boom Boom Dance

Konami has announced it will continue to compete in the Kinect-based dance game market with Boom Boom Dance, an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive revealed at last week's Tokyo Game Show. Unlike Konami's Kinect-powered DanceMasters, which launched last November to negative reviews and slow sales, Boom Boom Dance will not ask players to mirror complicated dance routines performed by pre-animated on-screen dancers. Instead, as shown in the debut trailer, players will directly control an on-screen avatar, performing freestyle dance moves in an attempt to hit on-screen balls in time with the music. The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Sony's camera-based EyeToy Groove for the PS2 and touch-screen games like Nintendo's Elite Beat Agents. Konami helped popularize the dance genre worldwide with the best-selling, pad-based Dance Dance Revolution franchise, launched over a decade ago. Since then, the company has ceded its dominance in the space to top-selling competitors like Ubisoft's Just Dance and Harmonix's Dance Central. But there has been some concern that the dance gaming market in general is set for a collapse similar to that recently seen by instrument-based rhythm games. While many dance titles saw strong sales during and just after the 2010 holiday season, the genre has slowly slipped off the top sales charts as 2011 has continued. Konami has yet to reveal pricing or release details for Boom Boom Dance.