Xbox Shelves Dance App at Last Minute
App has to wait till next year to deck the halls.
Holidays campaigns are chock-full of moving parts on the digital front these days, so it’s no surprise when small initiatives sometimes get shelved at the last second. Such is the case with Xbox Kinect’s “Dance*Cam” app, which was set to be released today but has now been delayed indefinitely.
The original plan was to release the app prior to the holidays to build Facebook and mobile buzz around the product during the important shopping season.
“In final reviews with an app store yesterday evening, the app was delayed due to a couple of minor [user interface] issues that were not previously part of approval terms, ” an AKQA rep explained in an email sent to ClickZ today.
“The team submitted a fix immediately, but due to the holiday crunch in the app store review process, they were informed that it will not be addressed until after the New Year. As we were launching this on three platforms (iOS, Android and WinPhone7), AKQA pulled all three until they can all go live at once. The launch date now is indefinite as we do not know when the next reviews will happen and how long they will take.”
Whenever Dance*Cam does see the light of day, it will let consumers shoot videos with a smartphone and share them on Facebook. Designed to promote Xbox’s “Dance Central 2” video game, the mobile app will encourage users to record themselves dancing to songs from a library of artists including Enrique Iglesias, Sean Kingston, Far East Movement, and La Roux. The app will include an automated editing feature to give the videos polish.
Participants will be able to share the vids with Facebook friends while challenging them to make their own for a dancing contest. The app will then combine the two videos into one so users can post it to their Facebook walls, where other friends can vote for their favorites.
