6 Surprising Things You’ll Love About Just Dance 2024

Just Dance key art

With Just Dance 2024 out now for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5, we limbered up our muscles and visited Ubisoft’s Paris studio to go behind-the-scenes on the latest in the best-selling rhythm action series.

It’s a bigger production than you’d think. With an army of dedicated costume designers, makeup artists, set creators, and choreographers, Just Dance 2024 is as much music video production as game development. And, boasting 40 new songs partnered to unique stages built from the ground up, this year’s edition is an impressive example of collaboration.

Here are six things you’ll love about Just Dance 2024.

Superb Stages

There are over 40 new stages in Just Dance 2024, each a fully rendered 3D space with its own associated track, graphical effects, and storyline. In Jamiroquai’s Canned Heat stage, the dancer is accompanied by an animated disco ball that vibes energetically alongside them. In Cure For Me by AURORA, the dancer occupies a darkly lit crypt that bursts into life during the chorus when thousands of multicolored butterflies emerge. There’s even a photorealistic Chateau de Versaille stage that Ubisoft shot on-location in the iconic Paris palace.

Mindblowing Choreography

We spoke to Just Dance 2024 choreography director Estelle Manas about the most extreme moves in this year’s edition. “If I have to think of a silly move, I could talk about the SloMo map, which comes to my mind because it's a very difficult map, an extreme level, which uses an official choreography by the original artist Chanel. This map begins with a split porté. So, yes, it may seem a bit crazy to people, but it's also very impressive.” Thankfully, if your legs don’t bend that way, you can filter maps by difficulty.

Outrageous Costumes

During our studio tour we were invited into the costume department where designers were hard at work fashioning dozens of intricate outfits, each one custom-made to ensured dancers not only looked the part, but were able to move around flawlessly. Some looks had to be modified after being taken for a spin - leather trousers are prone to splitting during a few of the more intensive moves. There’s just one rule when it comes to Just Dance costumes: no green. Against a green screen they tend to turn the wearer invisible.

Technological Improvements

Just Dance 2024, as in previous editions, rates your moves using motion-sensing in the Nintendo Joy-Con, or body tracking via a smartphone app. Now, however, Ubisoft is leaning into AI to improve accuracy. Essentially, by downloading the latest Just Dance smartphone app (freely available on iOS and Android), machine learning technology is able to visualize your skeleton in 3D space. The more videos it sees and the more data it gathers, the more accurately it’ll score you. And not only that, but the app lets up to six people play simultaneously.

Chart-Topping Songs

Over 40 new tracks in Just Dance 2024 cover genres including hip-hop, pop, latin, and K-pop. We asked creative director Matthew Tomkinson on his favourite. “One song that we wanted to include for a very long time was I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston…We had fun imagining the story of a girl dancing in a record store in this era and having many coaches from different Just Dance maps come to dance with her. She gets a dress at the end of the song, and it becomes a huge party.”

A Massive Song Library

Just Dance 2024 features the largest library of songs yet. That’s if you sign up for the Just Dance+ subscription service, which gives you access to a whopping 300 songs, on top of the 40 that already ship with the game. A subscription to the service also lets you play new songs uploaded to the game each season, and offers special perks for in-game events. You get a one-month Just Dance+ free trial with every copy of the game.