is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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If you told me last year the Nex Playground would outsell Microsoft’s Xbox, even for two weeks, I would have laughed my way out of the room.
It’s a three-inch cube of a game console that’s likely less powerful than your phone, one which uses a single camera to track your body. It only plays curated, certified kid-safe games. Though frequently compared to the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect, the Nex Playground is worse than either at tracking motion.
Nor is it cheap: $250 upfront plus $89-a-year or $49-a-quarter annual subscription to get more than a basic sampler. If you like a game, you can’t buy it separately. Many are little better than shovelware and most are graphically ugly; I haven’t tried a single game with the charm or polish of Nintendo or the best of Apple Arcade.
And yet, lying sick in bed with a 99-degree fever, my five-year-old begged me to let her play.
When we started a game of virtual bowling, even Grandpa wanted in. (Grandpa never wants in.)
“I want to try again!” said my nine-year-old, after she sent her low-rent airplane plummeting to its doom.
This one wide-angle camera tracks up to four people.
They didn’t care that the games were bad. They cared that they were dead simple to pick up and play, no controller and no experience necessary, on a big screen. They cared that the games made them dance and jump and swing their arms, and that their dad looked pretty funny doing the same.
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