Ever since 2009, Ubisoft’s Just Dance series has been one of those gaming juggernauts that’s never stopped moving. Every single year since its Nintendo Wii debut has brought a new installment, spanning generations of consoles. The cold truth, though, is that the series was always at its best on the Wii. It was built around the console’s peculiar motion controls, so it’s never felt like a clean fit for most consoles its come to since. That’s why it’s so surprising that it took this long to get Just Dance VR.
While consoles are getting a standard 2025 edition, headsets like the new Meta Quest 3S are getting a lighter version built around the tech. Unsurprisingly, Just Dance is a natural fit for VR, acting as another great fitness option for those who use their headsets to get some light cardio in. It’s likely the best way to play the series since its Wiimote days, but it comes with a serious caveat: You’ll probably want to turn your apartment into a bounce castle if you want to play it safely.
Dancing in VR
I didn’t need to put on my Quest 3S to know how well Ubisoft’s hit rhythm game would translate to VR, but one sweaty morning with it confirmed my hunch. When I open it up, I’m given a menu full of songs I can choose from. It’s a slim list compared to its console counterparts; it only contains 25 songs compared to the 40 in Just Dance Dance 2025 Edition. It’s a fairly dated selection of songs too, as if its meant to be a quick greatest hits collection from the franchise’s history. Songs like Call Me Maybe, Born This Way, and Ellie Goulding’s Lights really date the project. It’s a little puzzling that it doesn’t share any modern hits with the 2025 Edition, like Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso.
While that’s strange, the core dancing formula just makes sense in VR, even if it takes a minute to understand exactly what I’m supposed to do. When I select my first song (I started with Carly Rae Jepsen, of course), I’m taken off guard as dance prompts fly by on the screen. Arrows tell me how to move my limbs, but without a thorough tutorial to ease me in, I miss a lot of nuances. It takes me a few songs to understand that I’m supposed to keep moving even when prompts aren’t on the screen or to move my body slowly into some positions rather than snapping to them. The unclear UI could do a better job at communicating that, but I’m able to find my footing when I instead focus on the onscreen dancer modeling each move.
Once I gave in to the absurdity of it all, I found myself really getting in to the goofy fun of it all. I was back in the Wii era, but with the Quest’s Touch Plus controllers instead of the Wiimote. I flung my arms around wildly and worked up a legitimate sweat in the process. Experiences like this are partly what I come to VR for. I ultimately want to move my body when I throw a headset on, getting a small fitness experience that Metaphor: ReFanazio certainly isn’t going to give me. Just Dance VR got the job done, once again dialing in on the health benefits of the series on a platform that’s perfect for it.
Well … almost perfect.
I was finally cutting loose after a few songs when I got a rude — and painful — awakening. As I pumped my arms to Blinding Lights, I managed to punch a bookshelf. Look, I never said I was graceful, and a Brooklyn apartment is just never the ideal place to test VR, but there’s still a lesson to be learned here. No matter how conscious you are of your body when you are in VR or how big your play space is, the reality is that you can’t see where you are at any given time. When I was fully immersed in Just Dance VR‘s neon colors, it was easy to lose track of where I was even with the Quest’s boundary sensors.
This isn’t just a Just Dance issue; it’s something I’ve butted up against in plenty of VR games over the years. It’s just a more pronounced hurdle for a game that often asks you to spin your hands around or spread your arms as wide as possible. The advantage of playing on console is that you’re fully aware of your surroundings and can avoid bumping into a wall. That luxury disappears in a headset. I would never in a million years leave a child with a game like this in an expensive headset unless I was looking for an easy way to collect insurance.
How do you solve for a problem like that when it’s so fundamentally baked into the tech itself? I think there’s an easy fix and it’s fortunately ready now. Modern VR headsets are getting much better at providing clear passthrough technology. The Meta Quest 3S is especially a great step in that direction, offering a clear look at my surroundings when turned on. The ideal version of Just Dance in VR uses that tech, relying more on mixed reality to put the dancing prompts in the real world. I have to imagine that Ubisoft’s next stab at this will figure that out and better realize the potential here. Just Dance VR is the best way to play the series, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way.
Just Dance VR launches on October 15 for Meta Quest headsets.
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