Harmonix: Dance Central Outselling Rock Band 3

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.