We had an even busier E3 than usual this year, because not only were we bringing a game, but it was a game we announced on the Monday of E3!

In case you missed our announcement, you can watch the whole Microsoft Press Conference where we announced Dance Central Spotlight here! Our co-founder and current Chief Creative Officer Alex Rigopulos took the stage to talk about our studio’s TWO exciting titles we have coming out this fall, including Dance Central Spotlight which will be available in September! It was really exciting to see Bodie and Emilia up on the big screen when we’ve had to keep it all a secret for so long.

The rest of Monday was a chaotic blur as we raced between E3 event set ups, on-air demos, and eventually to the Microsoft Press Showcase in the evening. This year, the Showcase was held at the United Artists Theatre, which is one of the coolest venues I have ever been in. Lighting up the gothic interior design with the Xbox green gave everything an eery batcave glow: the perfect place to have our first hands on gameplay with Dance Central Spotlight.

And play people did! Attendees spent the entire night wandering by to show off their moves, including MMA fighter Chuck Liddell, who was all grins.

Tuesday the show itself actually started. It’s been a year and a half since we’d had a Dance Central set up at an event, and I forgot how much FUN these games are to play at shows. The Dance Central Spotlight kiosk was set up in the Microsoft’s glowing green booth, right by the press rooms. Think of all those important business meetings taking place with “Happy” playing in the background!

Did I mention how fun and tiring Dance Central Spotlight is to show off? By an hour into the show we were a sweaty group, going through water bottles by the dozens.

We had five awesome songs to show off this week, with “Happy” and “Talk Dirty” easily being the most popular choices by attendees. My own personal favorite though is “Counting Stars,” and there were plenty of people who didn’t mind humoring me with a dance.

Staffing our booth this year were myself, Matthew Nordhaus (Creative Lead), Jim Toepel (Lead Designer), and Alli Thresher (Designer). We had too many fans to count swing by our kiosk to check out the new game, and got to hear both from old Dance Central fans that have been with us from the beginning and new fans that have never even heard of the series before! Everyone had a blast dancing, either with us, their friends, or making new dance buddies.

And can I just say what a wonderful thing it is to have 8 routines available for every song when you only have 5 songs to dance to for 4 days? And dance we did, pretty much nonstop, with only occasional breaks for soft serve ice cream and to visit the rest of the Harmonixers staffing the Fantasia booth (or to hop on the Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved kiosk nearby).

E3 runs for three days, plus we stayed late on Tuesday and Wednesday to give press and retailers some extra time with the games. That means we danced for over 30 hours last week!

By the time we flew home on Friday, we were all quite exhausted, but it was such a fun week. We are so excited to finally get to show off Dance Central Spotlight, and what better way to kick off the march to launch than by dancing at E3 with so many dance fans? Thanks to everyone who came by, and hopefully we’ll get to see even more of you at shows later this summer!