NBA Baller Beats will work on carpet, comes with its own basketball
Yes, Majesco has considered the fate of living rooms when faced with the threat of NBA Baller Beats, the Kinect game that asks players to dribble a real basketball in time to licensed music. "In NBA Baller Beats, dribbling is and should be contained very close to the body," Majesco's Chief Marketing Officer, Christina Glorioso, told Joystiq in an email interview.
"And in real life too, or the defender will steal it from you!" She said that in QA testing, "if a ball got away, it was more likely a ball rolling out of view of the Kinect rather than a flying object."
Majesco also determined through rigorous testing that it is possible to play Baller Beats in a carpeted room. In fact, Glorioso told us, the packaging will note that it works on "most surfaces." "'Most' means it doesn't work on shag rugs!" she warned. It stands as evidence of the game's unique nature that a video game company now has to test the ability of a basketball to bounce on carpet, and label its product accordingly.
As the first Kinect game to require a peripheral, Baller Beats is also in the unique position of being the only game to ship with a real, full-sized basketball. However, if that's not right for you for whatever reason – you want something lighter, or smaller, or bouncier – you can use that as well. "As long as it is the general size and shape of a basketball," Glorioso said, "and is a comparable color (orange, red, brown family)."
Glorioso is confident that this odd package – again, this is an NBA-licensed rhythm game that you play by bouncing a real basketball – will find an audience. "As a genre, basketball is hugely popular; there are 80 million basketball fans in the US and more than 500 million people who play basketball on competitive and grassroots levels worldwide," Glorioso said. So that's the subject matter.
"In regards to video games," she added, "sales of NBA video games are up; more than 5
million NBA video games were sold during last year's NBA season. And we know basketball is a huge seller on Xbox 360 with close to $100 million in sales. Plus, the market for Kinect titles that possess a similar target to NBA Baller Beats is at more than $106 million in sales last year alone, and we believe the Kinect will continue to grow significantly in the coming year."
Majesco sees Baller Beats as a "cross-genre title" like its hit dance/exercise game Zumba Fitness. It's certainly cross-genre enough.
