The Nex Playground is everything Xbox Kinect wanted to be

It’s the year 2026 and the hottest game in my living room is Fruit Ninja. No, I’m not in the midst of an ill-advised retro mobile gaming kick. Instead, my family and I have been jumping around and slicing flying fruit in our living room using the Nex Playground. It’s a tiny gaming system built entirely around Kinect-like games. With its camera and onboard computer vision processing, the $249 Nex Playground can track up to four players as effectively as Microsoft’s clunky old Xbox motion tracker. Simply put, the dream of the Kinect, as well as Nintendo’s Wii, lives on in the Nex Playground.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical about Nex making a dent in the console arena. It’s tough for new companies with no hardware experience to steal any limelight away from entrenched competitors like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. But the Nex Playground’s simplicity, accurate motion tracking and library of kid-friendly titles (including the likes of Peppa Pig and Bluey) has made it a hit among families. The company says it sold 650,000 units last year, which might not sound like much, but it was enough to beat the beleagured Xbox last November.

Nex

The Nex Playground brings motion-tracked games to the entire family. Consider it the best of the Xbox Kinect in a tiny box.

Pros

• Fun core titles
• Solid motion-tracking
• Well-designed hardware and UI
• Large library of games
• Works offline

Cons

• Requires an ongoing subscription to access most games
• Needs large open space for play

Honestly, I’m just happy it gets my kids off the couch. I do my best to limit screen time with them, but as someone who has fond memories planted in front of my TV playing endless hours of SNES games, I also leave some room for my kids to explore tech and media on their own. I love the way Minecraft’s near-limitless creative potential has unleashed my daughter’s imagination, but I also want her to move more, especially in these winter months when we can’t easily go outside.

Even though the Nex Playground is another screen-based activity, the sheer variety of games to play keeps my kids entertained and it helps them break a sweat. The console’s version of Fruit Ninja is similar to that game’s VR forays, where you have to stand up and make an effort to swipe your arms. You’re not just dragging your fingers across a screen. Go Keeper gamifies the role of a soccer goalkeeper, which leads to my kids jumping all over our family room to block and catch stray balls. And we all love having mini-dance parties with Starri, which has you swinging your arms and dodging obstacles, similar to VR titles like Beat Saber and Synth Riders.

In addition to those three games, the Nex Playground comes with Party Fowl, a collection of mini games, as well as its own spin on Whack-a-mole. If you want more games, you have to subscribe to the Nex Play Pass for $89 a year or $49 for three months. The company also offers a $29 Sports Pack at Target stores, which includes tennis, basketball and bowling games. Beyond those options, though, there’s no other way to add new titles to the Playground. You can’t buy anything individually, and since the entire platform is digital, there’s also no market for cheap used games like you’d find for consoles.

Nex’s subscription model is undoubtedly the Playground’s biggest flaw, especially given the system’s $249 price. Instead of being an expensive console that you buy once (like an Xbox), and then occasionally purchase new titles for, the Playground is an ongoing commitment constantly calling for your wallet. To the company’s credit, the device doesn’t feature any ads or in-app purchases.

“Ultimately, we would like to establish that long-term relationship … we want to serve your family consistently with new content, and new updates all year round,” Nex CEO David Lee said in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. He noted that the company added twenty new games to its subscription over the last two years, as well as 40 game updates over the last year. Similar to Xbox’s Game Pass, the goal is to maintain the Nex Play Pass’s value over time.

You could argue the Nex Play Pass’s steep price isn’t as bad as the $15 to $30 per child that indoor activity centers charge. Those godforsaken places only distract kids for a few hours at a time, and visiting one also comes with the risk of contracting exotic childhood illnesses. Theoretically, the Nex Playground could be something you turn to whenever you need to work out restless energy from your kids. And if that means parents could get a bit more sleep on the weekend, or just a few minutes to themselves for a cup of coffee, all of a sudden $89 a year doesn’t seem so bad.

I’m also impressed by the Nex Playground’s hardware and software, both of which are far more polished than I’d expect from a new hardware company. The device itself is a pastel-colored plastic box with a camera on the front (and a cute lens cover). You just have to plug it into power and an HDMI port, slap some batteries in the remote (which looks like an elongated Roku remote) and connect to Wi-Fi. It took a few minutes for the Playground to update the first time I turned it on, and I also had to create a Nex account using my phone.

Once that initial setup phase was over, it took another five minutes to download the initial batch of five games to the Playground via my gigabit connection. That timing entirely depends on your internet setup — I’ve seen reports of it taking up to 30 minutes to install the Nex’s core games. I was also able to download the entire Play Pass library of titles in 35 minutes, but it could take a few hours on slower connections. Thankfully, those downloads happen in the background, so you can play other titles while waiting for new ones to install.

Another plus? Once you’ve downloaded the games, you can play them entirely offline. That makes it easier to grab the Playground and bring it on vacation, or to a friend’s house, than it is to travel with other consoles. As long as you can reach a TV’s inputs, have nearby power and clear out around six feet of space, you can play the Playground.

Nex’s long experience developing motion-tracked games and experiences is a major reason why the Playground is so successful. The company previously created Homecourt, an app for tracking your basketball skills, as well as Active Arcade, a collection of Playground-like minigames for iOS devices. Lee admitted that it’s tough to get parents to use their phones for things like Active Arcade. That led him to develop the Playground as a closed ecosystem, where the company could build a suite of games around a device where it could control every aspect of the hardware.

Now that Nex Playground features games from well-known kids brands like Peppa Pig, it’s clear that Lee’s intuition has paid off. While I have some concerns about the company’s subscription model, Nex has accomplished a rare feat: It developed a simple box that makes it easy for your entire family to jump into genuinely innovative games and experiences. You don’t need to set up a clunky console or any additional accessories. Just plug in the Nex Playground, and you too could be hand-slicing virtual fruit on your TV in no time.