The game was the United States' 4th best-selling game in its debut month of January 2007.
To offer a unique visual style for each minigame, developers were asked to make their own design for the minigame that they were working on. The only rule that Abe imposed on the minigame designs was for the developers to make it instantly obvious as to what is happening in the minigames.
Goro Abe first came up with the idea for the game when the Wii Remote was revealed to him. Since the developers believed that holding the controller in only one way limited the game's entertainment value, they decided to introduce new positions and motions to the game for the Remote to be held.
The developers wanted players to move as if they were dancing when playing the game, so they decided that "Smooth Moves" was the best title to use to describe the game's actions.