Nex Playground preview and interview – the console that outsold PS5 and Xbox

GameCentral gets a hands-on session with the Nex Playground, the unexpectedly successful spiritual successor to Kinect.

Last year, something called the Nex Playground made headlines for the fact that it was the second best-selling games console for Black Friday week in the US.

Despite being on the market since late 2023, this was the first time many people had ever heard of it (partially because it’s only ever been available in the US), and yet it was clearly a very popular item, outperforming both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Now the Nex Playground is set to expand its reach by launching in the UK and we recently went hands-on with the device to see exactly how it works, how it’s found such success, and whether it’s truly deserving of it.

How does the Nex Playground work?

The Nex Playground is a small cube with a built-in camera and library of motion-controlled video games. While it’s been billed as a spiritual successor to the Wii, it has more in common with the Xbox Kinect.

That description might make some cringe, as the Kinect was infamously unpopular despite being a sales hit. Its games demanded motion controls for even menu navigation and, more importantly, it barely worked, resulting in a legacy mired by low quality games.

Although the Nex Playground doesn’t make use of the same tech, we couldn’t help but be sceptical about it. So, we were pleasantly surprised to find that its motion tracking isn’t just passable, it’s legitimately good. Not to mention menu navigation is handled by a separate remote so no flailing your arms like a lunatic just to pick a game to play.

Granted, we only had time to test out a handful of games – Avatar: The Last Airbender Earth Rumble, Homerun Heroes, Tennis Smash: Racketville, and Fruit Ninja – but we didn’t really struggle to get any of them to work and any instances where our movements weren’t registered came down to us not using strong enough motions.

Take the Avatar game, for example, where fan favourite character Toph walked us through a tutorial on how to be an earthbender and fight opponents in one-on-one first person bouts.

Swinging our arms to throw rocks, stomping the ground to summon pillars from the earth, jumping and ducking to avoid projectiles; the game demanded a lot of complex motions, and it was all responsive so long as we made full use of our body.

Just lightly swinging our hands wasn’t enough and it never mistook one motion for another. Even more impressively, we were playing with a crowd of people behind us, which we feared would confuse the camera and interfere with the gameplay, but there were no real problems – which is a promising sign for any local multiplayer experiences.

The same went for Homerun Heroes, a simple baseball game all about scoring home runs, which we were recommended to play with a foam bat in our hands.

It was completely optional since the camera doesn’t recognise the bat at all, but having something tangible in our hands seemed to help with timing our swings and score more points than our computer-controlled opponent. Not to brag but we even landed several perfect strikes in a row.

In retrospect, we wish we used a real racket for Tennis Smash, since just using our right hand, while perfectly viable, left our arm feeling very sore the following day.

It also took us a while to realise our positioning determined the direction of the ball, as indicated by an arrow on the ground, but once we figured that out, we were handily scoring against the computer opponent.

Our biggest concern is the amount of space required for some of these games. It’s not an issue for something like Fruit Ninja, which only required the use of our arms, but positioning was extremely important for the Avatar and tennis games.

We needed to sidle side-to-side frequently; something we would’ve struggled with in a cramped living room. Although this does mean the Nex Playground encourages the kind of highly active play that made the Wii so popular.

According to Nex’s CEO David Lee (who co-founded the company in 2017, after an eight year stint as an engineering manager at Apple), this sort of technology has improved considerably since the days of the Kinect, although it did require a lot of testing.

‘The technology improved because it’s no longer a depth camera or field-type of flight sensor. It’s actually AI. With AI… we can improve the model and make it more accurate over time as well. … Honestly, with generative AI, we can generate training data.

‘We heard from a customer that, hey, when the environment is darker and the environment is a little bit more chaotic, detection is worse. We generate images to that exact environment and then train the model with that and then distil it to make it smaller.

‘Obviously, we built that over nine years, so we have a lot of experiences of how we train our own models too. … We have capabilities to actually optimise architecture, optimise the model. That’s what we’ve done in the last nine years.

‘I would not say it’s as precise as a controller. It’s very hard, but in the right operating environment, it’s getting very close. We also design around it and make sure that user experiences are similarly smooth as well.’

What games are available on Nex Playground?

While we only sampled a handful, a quick scout through the Nex Playground’s library shows it has a wide range of games available, from sports and fitness games to relaxing puzzle games.

Nex has also secured partnerships to licence plenty of recognisable franchises, such as Kung Fu Panda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sesame Street, which makes sense as the console’s target audience is children aged three to 12; a market that the likes of Sony and Microsoft have very much neglected.

Lee describes the Nex Playground as something that can serve as an after-school activity. His hope is that kids will be encouraged to take up real sports after playing the associated games: ‘We think about sports, we think about music, we think about arts, we think about learning, so basically where the after-school activities are.’

The presence of fitness and puzzle games shows Nex is taking parents into account too. For example, Lee says the inclusion of fitness games can serve as a more accessible alternative to going to a gym.

‘We think about the kids, we think about the parents, we think about grandparents. The goal is to build something that all can play together. We think about different roles we play for families.’

This partially stems from how the demand for the kind of family experiences the Wii offered back in the day never went away, as evidenced by the direct feedback Nex is receiving from customers.

Lee boasts he’s part of an active Facebook community page with 48,000 people, where he’s learned first hand what sort of games parents want for not only their kids but for themselves.

‘Some are asking for arcade games. Some are asking for golf for their husband. All kinds of requests are coming in. Sometimes we have a good discussion about certain things too. Some of them sharing their stories. It’s really, honestly hugely inspiring for some of the stories of what role that we actually play for them. We can’t be more happy with our community.’

This is also how Nex has been recruiting external developers as those developers are parents themselves looking to build games for their kids. Nex does have its own team of four internal development studios, which are currently responsible for most of the console’s output. Although the plan is to make it 50/50 between first party titles and the 15 third party partners Nex now has.

Nex both approaches studios for partnerships and accepts pitches, although we were told that it has a strict vetting process for what games it adds to the console, no doubt to ensure they’re an appropriate fit for their audience.

Adults may be being catered to as well, but we failed to spot anything in the Nex Playground library that vaguely resembled a Call Of Duty style shooter or a Resident Evil-esque zombie game.

Is Nex Playground safe for kids?

Nex is especially keen to get across that the Nex Playground is completely safe for kids; something that’s a hot topic regarding video games nowadays, especially concerning the likes of Roblox.

For starters, while the Nex Playground does have online functionality, there’s no real online multiplayer (aside from online leaderboards) nor are there any communication features. Not even text chat.

Additionally, Nex promises that any motion tracking data is kept local to the device and, unlike the Kinect, it comes with a camera cover for when the Nex Playground’s not in use.

How much does the Nex Playground cost?

On its own, the Nex Playground is £269, which is far cheaper than even the Nintendo Switch 2’s £395.99 price tag. For that price, though, you only get access to five games.

New games can’t be bought separately and instead you need to pay a subscription fee to access the full library of 60+ games. You can pay either a quarterly subscription of £45 or an annual subscription of £90, which Lee promises comes with ‘50 game updates a year, and 15 to 20 new games a year.

‘The model basically is a commitment to the customer, meaning that we keep showing up, we keep doing great things, and we hope customers stay with us for another year.’

It’s not dissimilar to Xbox Game Pass, but where that has faced scrutiny and criticism for eating into traditional game sales, and ultimately not being as successful as Microsoft wanted, Lee believes such a service for the Nex Playground was the best choice and one that’s so far proved fruitful – arguing that the target audience is one that doesn’t usually purchase new games on a regular basis.

‘I think, from my perspective, only a subscription model would work for a customer we’re serving because we’re serving families with young kids, and having new games launching every other week is a virtue.

‘We also want to build deeper games, too, for games that people want to play the most. We keep updating them with new content. Our attach rate is close to 90%. The renewal rate after a year is roughly 70%.

‘We probably leave a lot of money on the table, but it’s also a model that’s simple. … It’s important that we pick the right model for the market that we’re serving. This is not a market that would want to buy. It’s not in the habit to buy games regularly.’

That said, the Nex Playground has not been immune to the effects of the global memory shortage, which has prompted Sony and even Nintendo to raise the price of their consoles.

Lee admits that the Nex Playground saw a $50 increase in April to $299, which the UK price is meant to reflect after VAT. However, Lee stresses that keeping the device affordable is important.

‘It’s extremely important that we manage to do that because this market is hard and we’re a small company. Doing it in a way that is sustainable is extremely important. … All we want to say about pricing is that we want to keep it low, but we also need to run this business responsibly.’

When does the Nex Playground release in the UK?

The Nex Playground aims to launch in the UK in late June, but there’s no specific date yet. Pre-orders are already available at retailers such as Amazon, Argos, and Smyths.

Will the Nex Playground be a success?

It’s too early to judge whether or not the Nex Playground will find the same level of success in the UK as it did in the US or if it will maintain momentum and serve as a genuine rival to the more famous consoles.

To its credit, though, it has a lot going in its favour. Not only is it far more affordable than its contemporaries, and thus a more enticing birthday or Christmas gift, it’s not spreading itself thin attracting the broadest audience possible and is instead focusing on a specific market.

Very young kids have been sorely neglected this generation, outside of the occasional Bluey or Lego game, and while Nintendo has always offered family titles like Mario Kart and Mario Party, the Switch 2 is so far lacking in that area too, as most of its exclusives are positioned towards traditional diehard players.

We’ll have to wait and see how the Nex Playground fares, but it just might become more than an obscure curiosity and ascend to a household name.

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