Zumba Meets Nex

A bold new step to make fitness fun

In elementary school, I was part of the choir and dance team. I sang. I danced. But the instructors were intense—serious enough to drain the fun out of it. So I bailed. If I hadn’t, I might’ve grown up a little less of a nerd.

Where were we?

While I was “nerding,” the world was taken over by dance games—more than once.

It started in arcades with Dance Dance Revolution in the late ’90s. You stomped on arrows to the beat of music while strangers watched. Eventually, the DDR mat made its way into living rooms. My brother had one.

Then came Just Dance in 2009, turning living rooms into dance floors around the world. It was wildly successful—tens of millions of copies sold, annual releases, and somehow still going. Fun fact: the final game ever launched on the Wii? Just Dance 2020. That’s seven years after Nintendo discontinued the console. Talk about staying power.

Dance Central arrived in 2010, bundled with the Kinect. It had full-body tracking, great music, and was probably the reason most people bought a Kinect in the first place.

And then there was Zumba Fitness, also in 2010. It brought the energy of Zumba classes into the home, sold like crazy, and helped a lot of people justify buying a Wii. It leaned into fitness and found its audience.

Dance games were often the first to show up and the last to leave. They defined the motion gaming era.

Where are we?

After Kinect was discontinued, the untethered dance experience disappeared. Just Dance is still one of Ubisoft’s top franchises, but with dedicated hardware gone, dance is no longer hands-free—a clear downgrade. Fans are just getting more of the same.

Enter Nex, and Active Play. We’re bringing dance games back—the right way.

First, we unlocked next-gen motion tracking: AI that understands video captured by a camera. No controllers. No sensors. No depth cameras.

Second, we built Nex Playground for the audience that loved dance games first—families. A platform designed to make dance games shine.

Third, we have a model that supports continuous innovation and live content drops. Look at what we did with Starri or Barbie Dance Party—updates every quarter. The game stays alive, all year round.

We have the right ingredients to give dance games a second life—one that can stand the test of time.

Introducing Zumba Fitness Party!

With our partnership with Zumba, we’re pushing boundaries. The big idea is to bring the fun of a Zumba class into your living room. Here’s how we’re doing it:

Instructor-led classes. Many dance games cut out the human element. We’re doing the opposite. Zumba classes are instructor-led, and their energy and presence matter. We bring the instructor front and center.

Real-time feedback. Building on the strong foundation of Zumba videos, Nex adds value by layering feedback on top of the instructor’s movements and gamifying how well you synchronize. Scoring encourages deliberate practice. With deliberate practice, there’s improvement. We’re putting players on the road to mastery and confidence.

Feature and content updates. The launch includes a substantial library: 4 intro classes, 4 extended sessions, and 2 full-hour dance workouts—66 songs in total. The exciting part? Zumba and Nex are planning to release a new class every month. And new features are on the way. At Nex, shipping a game isn’t the end—it’s the start.

Getting you ready for a live class. The game also links you to the official class finder. We help you practice the moves at home, so when it’s time to go IRL, you can groove with everyone else—confidently.

The Party Cell

I’ve introduced our other two studios—Music Cell and Metaverse Cell—in other posts. Party Cell was the first studio to ship a game at Nex. They’re based at our HQ in San Jose. It’s a tight-knit team that’s hard to break into (they dance together daily, you know). When they’re in a room, you feel the energy.

Some members are also seriously athletic—Nex Gym’s coach, Arron Mollet, was a professional athlete before Nex. If we ever held a basketball tournament between Nex studios, they’d beat the others hands down. I’d have to join their team just to keep things balanced.

Their first game, Party Fowl, is still going strong on mobile—half a million organic downloads in the past 12 months, mostly from Southeast Asia (we don’t know how). It was already making a name for Nex before Nex Playground even launched there.

On Nex Playground, the Party Cell has shipped, in chronological order:

• Party Fowl

• Nex Gym

• Family Fitness Challenge

• Kung Fu Panda

• Copy Cat Deluxe

• Zumba Fitness Party

See the pattern? They started with a party game, moved into fitness, and they’ve been mixing the two to create experiences across the spectrum. Zumba Fitness Party is their best dish yet—a wonderful mix of social, physical, and fun.

Party Cell will keep at it, with the belief that one day, they’ll discover the secret recipe to make fitness fun for everyone.

P.S. The producer behind Dance Central and Zumba Fitness, Lisa Roth, has recently joined Nex. The Avengers are assembling.