The gameplay of Dance Dance Revolution X continues the gameplay introduced at the beginning of the series. DDR X contains returning Konami Originals and classic licensed tracks as well as new songs by Konami and label artists. Despite the new overhauled cabinet design available, the dance stage layout remains almost completely unaltered to the original, except in North America, where aesthetic changes were made to cut costs in production.[17]
The scoring system from Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2 is nearly retained in this game. Since the step rating for shock arrow is similar to freeze arrow, their values are the same. The value of each step, jump, freeze, or shock arrow is equal to 1,000,000 divided by (Number of steps [A jump will be considered a step in scoring] + Number of freezes [A pair of freeze that starts and ends at the same time will be considered as one freeze in scoring] + Number of shock arrows [4-way or 8-way]).