Last year, a console not made by PlayStation or Nintendo outsold the Xbox Series X|S over Black Friday weekend in the US. That console was the Nex Playground. The mainstream media boost the Playground received from achieving such an unlikely feat means the console is now available in the UK. That means I was finally able to try it myself, and the little box has far exceeded my expectations.

Those expectations weren’t low, either. Sure, I wasn’t expecting the Playground to suddenly become my go-to console as it left my Switch 2 gathering dust, but after hearing a lot of good things about this little box, I was hopeful for what it might add to an already bustling video game landscape. Turns out, there is absolutely a space on the market for the Playground, not just because everything else is so damn expensive, but because it succeeds at being different rather than trying to be better.

What Can You Play On An Nex Playground?

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Whether you saw the headlines when the Playground embarrassed Xbox or this is your first time hearing of it, you might be asking yourself what exactly this new console is and what it can play. Well, it can’t play Elden Ring, nor Cyberpunk 2077, or pretty much any other game you can play on other consoles for that matter.

No, the Playground has its own self-contained gaming library. You don’t even need to buy new games for it. The console itself comes with five games - the Starter Pack - you can play right away, with the rest - more than 50 titles with more added all the time - available via the Play Pass. The Play Pass is a subscription that can be bought for either three or 12 months at a time and, once subscribed, you have access to everything the Playground has to offer.

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The range of games available is diverse, too. There are titles specifically designed for, and exclusively available on the Playground, like Arrow Party and Doodle Heads, games you might have seen elsewhere adapted for movement-controlled gameplay, like Fruit Ninja, and a ton of unique third party titles from some of the biggest IPs in the world, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rooftop Mayhem, Bluey: Bust-A-Move, and Avatar: The Last Airbender Earth Rumble.

There’s also a Playground version of the Sonic Forces mobile game on the way, as revealed during Sonic’s 35th anniversary livestream.

The only slightly frustrating part of choosing the games you want to play is the Netflix-style menu. Like Netflix, the games are separated into different categories. There’s a fitness section, for example, and games like Tennis Smash: Racketville and Homerun Heroes: Starstrikers (a personal favorite) are in the sports section. However, also like Netflix, those categories are shuffled whenever you next log in, with new ones added into the mix. There aren’t so many games that you'll never find your favorites again, plus you can check all of them out on Playground’s website, but it can be a little annoying.

The Playground’s unique library is required to match its unique control system. More on what exactly I mean by that in the next section.

What’s In The Box?

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The Playground itself is just a box. A very small box. Setting it up is so simple that you’ll be playing games within minutes. The only other thing in the box is a remote that you use to select games and any other options that might be awkward to navigate using your body. That’s right, I said your body. There are no controllers because you are the controller. Kinect, eat your heart out. There’s a camera on the front of the console, and all of the games are motion-based with an incentive to get up and get moving the second the Playground is plugged in. There’s also a magnetic lens cap attached so you can rest assured that you’re not being watched while the console isn’t in use.

How exactly you use your body to control the games is simply yet surprisingly varied from game to game. Basketball Knockout, for example, can pick up and differentiate between your movements as you pick up basketballs and try to throw them into a virtual net. You also have games like Luminous where your entire body is the controller. Moving from side-to-side moves a ball that you need to keep away from beams of light for as long as possible.

There’s a global leaderboard for that one. See you there.

The camera is incredibly receptive and is extremely effective at picking out and differentiating between multiple people - key for the console considering how many of its games are built around playing with others. I did have a few hiccups when it came to the camera focusing on the right person at the right time, but as long as you have enough room and players stick to their respective spots, you shouldn’t have many problems.

How Much Does It Cost?

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The price of the Playground is something of a double-edged sword. Prices start from $299, which, on the surface, might seem like a lot for a console like this. One with its own ecosystem of games that’s not been created by one of the big three.

You can throw an extra $100 on there if you plan on buying it bundled with the 12-month Play Pass, which I would strongly recommend.

However, stop and look around you at how much every other new console costs. The Playground has all of them beat, some by hundreds of dollars. We are rapidly reaching a point, if we’re not there already, where current-gen consoles are simply unaffordable to a huge percentage of people.

The Playground isn’t just a cheap alternative to other consoles that seem to get a price hike every other week. It’s not merely something Nex has thrown together to make a quick buck after seeing the increasingly worrying landscape, either. This is a well-thought-out console that aims to plug a widening gap in the market by being different from everything else rather than better than it.

There Is A Place For The Nex Playground In Modern Gaming

I really do believe there’s a space for the Nex Playground alongside the PS5, Switch 2, and Series X|S, and that that space is only going to get bigger as the cost of those other consoles continues to grow. The biggest hurdle Nex needs to overcome is getting its foot in the door, more so than it has already.

Right now, people are likely skeptical of the Playground at best, and completely oblivious to it at worst. Even though I was aware of its existence before having one of my own, I wasn’t aware of just how much the Playground offers and how good it is at what it does until I was literally standing there playing it.

The Playground isn’t just a gimmick, nor is it something you’re going to buy your kids for Christmas, use for two weeks while everyone is off work and school, and then forget about forevermore. If you have kids and you’re watching those console prices tick up as we inch closer to the holidays, the Playground should absolutely be an option for you.

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Nex Playground

$270 $299 Save $29 Brand Nex Original Release Date December 1, 2023 Original MSRP (USD) $299 Operating System Play OS (Android) Processor Amlogic A311D2-NOD (SoC) / Mail-G52 MC4 (GPU) Resolution Up to 4K Pros & Cons
  • Super easy to set up.
  • Lots of games, all included in the Play Pass.
  • Far more affordable than any other new console on the market.
  • Almost all games locked behind the Play Pass.
  • Netflix-style menu can be a little frustrating.
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