2011 FreeStyleGames
Platforms: Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3
Following the release of DJ Hero 2 in October 2010, FreeStyleGames immediately began work on what would become DJ Hero 3. Although Activision never officially announced the sequel, development was well underway before the publisher cancelled the entire Hero franchise in early 2011 following disappointing sales across the music rhythm genre.
The existence of the project briefly first came to public attention a while ago thanks to Gaming Historian: Liam Robertson, who explored the game’s development alongside the ambitious browser-based Hero World companion project in a detailed video documentary which is worth checking out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kK9vDysXwU).
Liam’s research revealed that the sequel was still evolving internally, with Activision repeatedly changing its direction as the publisher searched for a way to revitalise the series. The associated Hero World project aimed to link future Hero titles through an online platform spanning multiple games and consoles, but it too was ultimately cancelled before release.
In July 2026, we had an anonymous contact get in touch with us regarding an early Xbox 360 DVDR prototype of DJ Hero 3 in their possession. The plan from them was to back up and upload anonymously, and share details with Games That Weren’t about the development and a download link for the very first time. In late August 2026, we were contacted by them to say that the prototype had been finally dumped and uploaded anonymously to Hidden Palace, so we have now been able to publish this post to tell you more about it from the contributor themselves.
As mentioned above, information from our source revealed that development of DJ Hero 3 began shortly after DJ Hero 2 shipped. The FreeStyleGames team produced a vertical slice prototype intended to demonstrate the direction of the sequel before full production. Several prototype builds were circulated internally across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii development hardware, with later versions burned to DVD-R discs for QA testing – which is how this disc seems to have survived.
One of the major new features recalled by the contributor was “branching mixes”, together with experiments involving a new dance mode using Microsoft’s then new Project Natal (later known as Kinect) and Nintendo Wii Remotes. It remains unclear exactly how much of this functionality made it into the surviving Xbox 360 prototype that you can check out (more on this shortly). Sadly after submission of the prototype for evaluation, Activision decided to cancel the project as part of its decision to discontinue the Hero franchise.
What we have here is therefore the vertical slice prototype for the Xbox 360 edition that had been created and the result of at least a month of work. Unfortunately, although it opens in Xenia emulator and identifies itself internally as “DJ Hero 3” – it doesn’t run at all. The prototype fails with a “Failed to initialize Natal System” error, suggesting it is attempting to initialise Project Natal/Kinect support very early on before reaching any title screen or similar. Xenia doesn’t currently have Kinect support at the time of writing, and could be a long time coming.
Whether this requirement can be bypassed through binary patching remains to be seen, but the preservation of the prototype ensures that another important piece of gaming history has been saved. It is likely that this should run fine on a development Xbox 360 with a Kinect hooked up. Already, Aeritha has created some video to show the game running and Glitchgod has created screenshots and created a full entry on Hidden Palace, so we’ve updated the page accordingly. Hopefully some day soon it will be patched to work in Xenia too.
We may also get further information over time and will continue to update this page accordingly. If anyone from the project who worked on DJ Hero 3 would like to share any information (anonymously or otherwise), please do get in touch as well and we will be happy to update this page.
With a huge thanks to our anonymous contributor for saving this early prototype and for sharing details about its development with us, Hidden Palace for anonymous hosting of the prototype, Aeritha for creating the great video, Glitchgod for screenshots and full Hidden Palace entry and to Liam Robertson for his research into the wider history surrounding DJ Hero 3 and Hero World.
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This is a really cool build release, Thank you to whoever dumped the disc!
I tried it out and made a fully fleshed-out article for it https://hiddenpalace.org/DJ_Hero_3_(Nov_19,_2010_Prototype)
There’s some screenshots/mockups out there of a Dance Hero game. I was wondering if that was the result from DJ Hero 3.
Hopefully we get to see some more things from FSG soon.
That’s brilliant, thank you so much Glitchgod for confirming it works and taking video/screenshots. I’ll update the page now with credit.