Dancers performing for Ubisoft's Just Dance franchise at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, June last year. — AFP Relaxnews
Tenth in the best-selling music and movement series, Just Dance 2020 is heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Google Stadia, with smartphone integration. It's also landing on the console that started it all, the Nintendo Wii, as the console's last game, according to an executive director at its publisher, Ubisoft.
Just Dance was one of the runaway successes of the Nintendo Wii era, so much so that new franchise entries are still being made available for the discontinued console.
Nintendo stopped making the Wii in 2013, seven years after its 2006 debut; its shrunk-down, no-Internet remodel, the Wii Mini, was discontinued in 2017.
Yet the bestselling Just Dance has never skipped a year on Nintendo's best-selling console, even as versions for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the successor Wii U have come and gone.
"I think we are the last soldier standing!" Ubisoft Executive Director Alain Corré told The Telegraph as part of a wider conversation about new technology, industry trends, and overall publisher goals.
"We are the last game on the Wii and we are happy about that as there [are] still a lot of fans wanting to play on it."
That Just Dance" has a large enough audience on the Nintendo Wii to justify its continued production might seem surprising to the audience of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the enthusiast-oriented industry event at which it was announced last week.
But a Twitter user suggested one way the game's broad appeal and fun, exercise-oriented approach helped keep it relevant outside of game expos.
"Many hospitals and rehab centres use the just dance games to help patients who have limited mobility due to accident or illness build up strength and muscle tone, etc," wrote Alienaishas following Ubisoft's June 10 presentation (as picked up by GameRant and the Nice Games Club podcast). "Hospitals purchased Wiis for this purpose and are still using them to this day!"
An ex-game store employee, supitscarrie, responded to say that their location "always sold more copies of Just Dance on Wii than any other console," doing so "years after the Wii had stopped being relevant."
"A lot of older folks have a Wii just for Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Just Dance".
Others contributed with similar experiences at retail, or observations from retirement communities, hospitals, and physical therapy environments. – AFP Relaxnews
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