Nex Playground \u2013 Hands-on PhotosWhat You See Is What You Get<\/p>\n
Everything about the Nex Playground, from the gentle color palette of its cutesy, 3-inch-cubed form factor to its simplicity of setup and control, is aimed squarely at parents who desperately want their screen-addled kids to move. Its popularity shouldn\u2019t surprise: it\u2019s simple to use, there\u2019s almost no setup or waiting for game installs and updates, and every single game on the console forces you to get up and do something, just the way so many games did on the Wii. (I, for one, remember hearing my mom, who hadn\u2019t played a video game since the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES, holler \u201cSteeeeeee-RIKE!\u201d from the other room while she played Wii Sports<\/a> bowling back in 2006. This is just a logical extension of that vibe.)<\/p>\n Setup is a breeze. The Nex Playground comes in a neatly organized package, with numbered boxes indicating the order you should take things in. There are just four pieces: the Playground itself, an HDMI cable, a USB-C power cable (with a little magnetic puck attached to it that serves as a slap-on physical camera shutter), and a small remote. The Playground is super small and light, but the cables that come with it are very flexible and don\u2019t shove the console around while you\u2019re hooking it up the way a stiffer cable might.<\/p>\n The first-time configuration is also quick, as long as you have your Wi-Fi password handy and don\u2019t stop to read the lengthy privacy policy \u2013 which features a TL;DR at the top assuring you that the Nex Team, the folks behind the console, won\u2019t sell your information. Next, you have to create a Nex Playground account and push through a splash screen offering you a subscription to the company\u2019s $89 Play Pass plan. (We\u2019ll get to that.) Then it gives you tips, like to not wear patterned clothing, or to set it up somewhere with a play area free of furniture you could bash into. Lastly, it\u2019ll do a little test run to make sure where you\u2019ve put it works for it. <\/p>\n Once you\u2019re through setup, there isn\u2019t much you can configure from the settings menu found at the top of the Playground\u2019s home screen. You won\u2019t find HDR toggles or refresh rate and resolution options; what you get, visually, is just what you get. There are some things you can change, though: you can hide certain games or adjust the time zone, and you can decide how long you want it to idle before going to sleep, to save your precious OLED TV. You can also have it turn on or off your TV, using HDMI-CEC, when it\u2019s powered up or goes to sleep.<\/p>\n Things are similarly dull for the console\u2019s specs, which are barely worth discussing, apart from the fact that it has 16GB of RAM, which is more than the 12GB inside the Nintendo Switch 2<\/a>. That doesn\u2019t actually mean anything about their relative performance, but it\u2019s still a funny enough stat that I made sure to write it down. Either way, what it has is enough to run its Android-based Play OS, and that\u2019s all it needs. <\/p>\n Purchasing Guide<\/p>\n The Nex Playground is available just about anywhere you might expect: Amazon<\/a>, Target<\/a>, Walmart<\/a>, Best Buy<\/a> and more all have the system in stock. You won\u2019t need extra accessories, but you should assume it\u2019s $89 higher than the initial $299 price tag, because it\u2019s not very useful without a Nex Play Pass subscription.<\/p>\n Games and Gameplay<\/p>\n Okay, okay, the Nex Playground is technically a video game console, so let\u2019s talk about the games. Its catalog of 50-plus games ranges from a tidy collection of thoughtful but simple originals (I use the term somewhat loosely) by Nex Team, some decent third party efforts, and rejiggered versions of casual smartphone games like Fruit Ninja that we\u2019ve all been playing for well over a decade, to the sort of sloppy, licensed shovelware that plagued the Nintendo Wii, particularly near the end of its life. <\/p>\n You use the Playground\u2019s remote for setup, choosing games, and sometimes navigating in-game menus, but it\u2019s all motion control when it comes to actual gameplay. The system\u2019s motion tracking, which follows 18 points on your body, worked very well, even in the cramped space of my tiny apartment living room. I wish it had some form of depth detection besides its camera and onboard NPU, though, because I definitely kicked the built-in cabinet along one wall more than once because the game put an object inside of it. That wasn\u2019t an issue most of the time, but it would\u2019ve been nice if the games adjusted to my surroundings more (or at all).<\/p>\n Without a subscription, you only get five games, including Fruit Ninja. If you want more \u2013 and after you\u2019ve paid $300 for the dang thing, you will \u2013 your only choice is to shell out for Nex Team\u2019s $89-per-year Play Pass subscription or a $49 3-month variant thereof. Doing so nets you around 50 more games, many of which are licensed from popular children\u2019s programming, like Gabby\u2019s Dollhouse: A-meow-zing Moves or Unicorn Academy: Friendship Adventures. <\/p>\n As for whether any of this is fun, well, I\u2019ll say up-front that if the goal is to give your kids something they might think is fun but that gets them to move around, the Nex Playground works \u2013 at first. My 8-year-old loved Fruit Ninja, and Whac-A-Mole when I first hooked the system up. Unfortunately, the novelty wore thin quickly, and within a couple of days, I was alone in my quest to see if the Nex Playground is worth your time and money. It\u2019s a bad sign that my child lost interest so quickly, but no two kids are the same, and yours might react differently.<\/p>\n So, how was the actual gameplay to me, a middle-aged man? Well, I guess I\u2019ll tell you that through a series of mini-reviews of some of the few games I enjoyed.<\/p>\n Homerun Heroes<\/p>\n There\u2019s not much to Homerun Heroes: Starstrikers. It\u2019s a first-party online matchmaking arcade baseball game wherein you play against random others, trying to get more and better home runs than them. It\u2019s actually fun, too. After lightly customizing your anime avatar, its gameplay involves assuming a batting pose \u2013 with a prop bat, if you want, apparently<\/a> \u2013 in front of the Nex Playground, ready to swing your empty hands or prop bat when the time is right.<\/p>\n When the ball is pitched, a large circular outline appears onscreen and shrinks as it gets close. At the same time, an arrow underneath sweeps from pointing leftward to rightward, helping you to aim your hit \u2013 swing early, and it goes to the left; later, and it goes to the right. If you hit it just right, it\u2019ll hit one of the multiplier bubbles floating over the stands. (The middle one is the highest, multiplying your score by five.) <\/p>\n You need to keep your swings low if you want to get that home run. Finally, if you don\u2019t swing low enough, you won\u2019t get a home run. I got the hang of this game almost immediately, and my scores dwarfed those of my opponents. Who I assume were all small children. <\/p>\n Fruit Ninja<\/p>\n Ah, yes, Fruit Ninja. It\u2019s on everything. iPhones, the PS Vita, Xbox One, and even the Apple Vision Pro. I wasn\u2019t surprised to find it here, and it\u2019s pretty much the same game you\u2019ve been playing for the last 16 years. (Yes, Fruit Ninja is almost old enough to vote in a US election. Which would be fraud! Arrest this man!) <\/p>\n Anyway, I\u2019m not as good at Fruit Ninja as I was at Homerun Heroes. Onscreen, you\u2019re represented by a shadowy, pixelated silhouette with arms that end in glowing stumps. As you flail around, slashes follow; your goal, as ever, is to use those slashes to cut fruit in half as it\u2019s flung up from the bottom of the screen, while also avoiding the bombs occasionally mingled in with them. Because I own a Vision Pro, I might as well tell you that the Nex Playground version plays a little better than that one, except that, since you\u2019re translating the movement of your arms to a 2D space instead of a 3D one, it\u2019s very easy to accidentally cut fruit at the wrong time or trigger bombs. <\/p>\n But my kid, whose shoulder and neck aren\u2019t currently recovering at a glacial pace from some unknown injury, loves Fruit Ninja. The game has a few modes of play, including Classic (three misses or a bomb and you\u2019re out), Arcade (a timed, points-accrual fest), and Zen (in which you can\u2019t lose and don\u2019t have to deal with bombs if you don\u2019t want to). <\/p>\n Bowling Strike!<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve played Wii Sports (or its Switch variant), you\u2019ve played Bowling Strike! It\u2019s got a similar vibe, with subdued muzak-style tunes and the ambient sounds of a bowling alley playing in the background. Bowling Strike! is a little easier to just pick up and play, though, partly since you\u2019re not picking even picking up the remote, nor do you have to get down the slightly awkward Wii Sports timing of holding down the B button and letting it go at the right time \u2013 you just raise your arm when you\u2019re ready to hold the ball, then swing it down, back, and then forward. <\/p>\n There\u2019s a little of the subtlety of the Wii game, here. You can fling your ball at a left or right angle and even add spin, although I couldn\u2019t get the hang of any of that. The game\u2019s tutorial has you bend your arm left and right at the end of your follow-through to add spin, but it wasn\u2019t very consistent, for me. I can\u2019t say with full confidence that I don\u2019t lack the coordination required to pull it off, though.<\/p>\n Still, my kid and I had a good time with Bowling Strike! I definitely prefer playing Nintendo Switch Sports or Wii Sports, but at least virtual bowling on the Nex Playground doesn\u2019t carry with it the risk of an unintentionally-weaponized controller destroying my TV.<\/p>\n What Else Is There to Do?<\/p>\n Nex Team included a handful of games that could appeal to older gamers, too. In its library, you\u2019ll find a handful of fitness and dance games, one of which, Starri, you get for free and was both the most fun of the lot and the one that actually held my attention the longest. It\u2019s clearly a simplified take on games like Beat Saber and Synth Riders, and gives you a choice of \u201cCatch\u201d or \u201cSlash\u201d when you start a session. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve played a lot of Synth Riders, so I gave Catch a go, first. It\u2019s a lot different from Synth Riders, actually \u2013 instead of catching balls that fly at you from a synthwave hellscape, you mostly reach for spinning boxes as they appear on screen. Sometimes, blue or orange diamonds float in from the side at the bottom of the screen, toward a half-blue, half-orange circle that you rotate so that the colors match up when the diamonds reach it.. Slash mode felt closer to what I understand Beat Saber to play like (I\u2019ve never played it) \u2013 you flop your arms in the direction indicated by blue and orange arrows flying at you, and slash blue and orange bars, making sure all the while that you\u2019re doing so with the right color (your left arm is blue and your right is orange). <\/p>\n Starri\u2019s song library is mostly songs and artists I\u2019ve never heard of, but Nex Team included a few fun licensed gets, like Shakira\u2019s \u201cWhenever Wherever\u201d and the inevitable rickroll of Rick Astley\u2019s \u201cNever Gonna Give You Up.\u201d The game was extremely forgiving when it came to timing and placing my hands in the right place, though, so it wasn\u2019t hard to do well at.<\/p>\n The only other dance game is Barbie Dance Party, which I was, uh, terrible at. Its song list includes some from the excellent Barbie movie, but playing them involves mirroring the onscreen moves of a Barbie character. The Nex Playground is remarkably good at recognizing your motions in this of all games, so when I repeatedly failed to strike poses properly or at the right time, it didn\u2019t count. The game didn\u2019t pull punches when it came to what it wanted me to do. It\u2019s got the makings for a great party game, though \u2013 it\u2019s approachable, doesn\u2019t really punish you for mistakes, and it makes you look like a total buffoon in front of your friends. <\/p>\n The fitness games are few and not all worth a go. Box Flow Fitness, for example, felt pretty disconnected from what I was actually doing, and its \u201ctrainer\u201d was clearly (and annoyingly) voiced by an AI model. The goal is to punch flying objects with jabs, haymakers, and uppercuts, depending on the orientation of your target, and dodge angled bars by ducking or tilting your body. I\u2019ve played the same game in VR, and hated it on the Nex Playground as much as I did on my Vision Pro.<\/p>\n Family Fitness Challenge was better. This game fills the screen with the video feed from the Nex Playground\u2019s camera and an overlay, at the bottom, of objects you\u2019re expected to kick, dodge, or jump over. This one was more engaging, and definitely got my heart rate up as I tried to jump over hurdles \u2013 kicking them off screen when my timing was bad \u2013 or return soccer balls, ideally at floating onscreen targets. <\/p>\n The Problem With the Nex Playground<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mind the mostly shallow simplicity of the Nex Playground\u2019s game catalog. Some of them are pretty fun, and I could see having a blast playing a number of them with friends. Unfortunately, the motion-based gaming will prove hard or impossible to play for some people who aren\u2019t as mobile as I am, although to its credit, the system does at least have a filter for showing only games that use your upper-body exclusively, so people who rely on wheelchairs can still find something to do. <\/p>\n Where the Nex Playground really gets annoying is monetization. Apart from the base five games to start, you can\u2019t access any of the rest of the library without Nex Team\u2019s Play Pass subscription \u2013 there\u2019s no option to buy individual games at all. I could stomach being able to sign up for a month at a time at a slightly higher rate, but the best the company offers, besides its $89 annual fee, is three months of access at $49. That\u2019s a bonkers amount of money to pay for a library with so little to keep you coming back to it. <\/p>\n For any parents out there who\u2019ve found their way to this review and are curious if the Nex Playground might give their kids a fun incentive to move around a little: Don\u2019t buy it right away. Find a friend who already picked one up and schedule some time to go try it out. Really explore its library, ideally across multiple sessions. And if your kid likes it, consider how quickly in the past they\u2019ve gotten over the novelty of a friend\u2019s toy once they have one of their own. My own kid tried it at a friend\u2019s, but having one in our own home almost immediately knocked the shine off of it, apparently.<\/p>\n There are reasons to like the Nex Playground \u2013 its $300 price tag is a lot easier to stomach than the (soon-to-be) $500 that a Nintendo Switch 2<\/a> costs, and you don\u2019t have to buy extra controllers<\/a>. But it\u2019s also the same price as the original Switch, a system with a deep library of games, including plenty of those that use the Joy-Con controllers\u2019 built-in motion controls, which are easy to find used, at a nice price. Plus, you don\u2019t need a subscription to have a great time for many years with a Switch \u2013 you can buy the games you want, and they\u2019re yours. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IGN snootily turned down an offer to review the Nex Playground around its 2023 release. And why not?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-664459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
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