Too Edgy For Wii, Carmen Electra May Pole Dance On Xbox 360

Peekaboo Pole Dancing wants gamers to enjoy their upcoming pole dancing video game.

But they’re not exactly sure which gamers just yet.

The company behind the best-selling Carmen Electra pole dancing kit, the “Electra Pole,” announced in April that they were seeking partners to create a pole dancing game for the Wii.

However, yesterday when I met Simon Kay, a rep for Peekaboo and licensing agency AT New Media, he revealed that the company wasn’t quite sure which platform to go with yet.

“The concept is still up for discussion,” he told me at the Javits Center in New York during the Licensing International Expo. “Do we want to skew male or female? That depends on the platform we choose.”

The way he sees it, the video game could go one of two ways…

One way is to stick with the original plan and make a “pole fitness product” for the Wii. Last month, Kay told me via e-mail that “Peekaboo wants to make the fitness benefits of aerobic pole dancing accessible to millions of Wii users,” and the game would be aimed at both men and women looking to “improve their pole dancing skills while having fun, toning up and burning calories.”

Though if that’s the case, Peekaboo probably won’t be able to get its most famous endorser on board. “The biggest issue with the whole thing is Nintendo’s approval,” Kay said. “We’re not going to get Nintendo to approve a Carmen Electra-based Wii game, not in near future at least.” However, he thinks that with the right developer and publisher, they could skew the game towards females and their families as a unique way to get fit using fun avatars like Miis.

On the other hand, there’s the Xbox 360. Since MTV Multiplayer broke the news about a possible Xbox 360 motion-controller, he revealed that Peekaboo isn’t ruling out the console as their platform of choice, particularly with its heavily male audience.

Kay: “On the Xbox 360, the game could be edgier.”

And since the Electra Pole has only gone up in sales, he thinks an Xbox 360 game could be a more natural extension of the Peekaboo brand. “The other issue is that the game has to be relative to where the brand is going,” he said. “On the Xbox 360, the game could be edgier, and we could bring in Carmen Electra for it.”

“But are we over-worrying about Nintendo?” Kay wondered. He said that ultimately the platform they choose and how the game actually works using the motion controls will be up to the developer and publisher. So far Peekaboo has met with several publishers and developers, including a few at the Licensing Expo.

“The response has been great so far, but we’re wary at the same time,” he said. “Games work when you do a great job, but you can also kill your brand. So a game may not happen at all. It really depends on the right publisher.”

If all goes well, Peekaboo hopes to have a game out for the 2009 holiday season.

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