The Best Selling Console You Never Heard Of

When I heard that the Xbox wasn't the top seller this past holiday season, it didn't come as that much of a surprise. But then I learned it wasn't even in the top three. That's right, the box in third was less X and more next. But what is this thing? Well, if you've found yourself missing the days of wee bowling on the couch, this modestly spec'd cube has been quietly providing the solution, becoming the go-to box for family gaming over the last two years. But while the brand is undeniably fun and friendly, offering up old-school local multiplayer fun for gamers and their game-curious friends and family, not to mention that its entire catalog is KidSafe plus COPPA certified, there are some modern games industry habits that make it a little less wallet-friendly than it might seem at first glance. Maybe if I glance at it a third time, then I'll see something that makes me feel a bit better about it. Like this segue to our sponsor. Delete me. Data brokers are out there in the wild just buying and selling your information. That's like super not cool of them, if you ask me. So click the link in the description and start removing your information from hundreds of data brokers online. The packaging for the next cube is delightfully well-organized. You get the console itself, a power cord, an HDMI cable to connect to your TV or monitor, and a remote, but you won't be gaming with that. It is solely for navigating the UI. All gameplay input is handled by this little guy right here, an ultra-wide lens camera that accommodates full-body motion controls across as many as four players. We'll be trying that out very shortly. First though, let's talk about behind the lens, where there's an arm-based computer that should perform about like a mid-range phone from a couple of years ago, alongside a dedicated AI coprocessor that, shockingly, is not shoehorned in for no reason. It offers benefits to both latency for your controls and, surprisingly, privacy. See, having a local NPU on the playground turns your movements into a trackable skeleton that eliminates any need for the camera to capture any video and allows it to run completely offline, only using the internet to authenticate your account during setup and to download games to its 64 gigs of non-expandable storage that has five games pre-installed out of the box. Let's try a couple out. Let's try Whack-A-Mole. We're whacking moles. Boom. Ba-pow. It's like DK Bongos. Oh, oh, oh, oh. What is that? The fire. Ah, ah. Don't touch the fire. Ah. Okay. Oh, yeah, well, this is, wow, this is so much more fun now. I don't wanna bump my head. Oh, way to go, Linus. Sorry. All right, the gameplay tells us a lot about the age group that they're targeting with this device, just a shy bit younger than the average billionaire. But unlike Jeffy E and his friends, Nex is also interested in attracting an older audience and snuck in some more compelling gaming experiences based on two of the best-selling Rhythm VR games. Let's try out Starry. On boot, it basically asks, Beat Saber or Synth Riders? I think we all know which one I wanna play. Man, there's like, no. Shut up. What am I supposed to be doing? VR is definitely better for this. I mean, I'm still getting some combos, I don't know. Kind of fun. Definitely got me warm. Oh, perfect opportunity to show off our new Clean Up Wizard T-shirt, available now at lttstore.com. Let's talk about the tech. Since there's only an AI-assisted camera feed, the Playground infers depth rather than mapping it out like its spiritual predecessor, the Xbox Kinect, which used IR in order to perceive depth. In some games, you can even see some of the 18 tracking points that it uses to guesstimate your position in 3D space and the positioning of your joints. Now, when you're looking out for it, you can tell that this approach gives up some accuracy, even compared to much older body tracking solutions. But it also made way for the ultra-wide lens that makes the Playground usable very close up in smaller living spaces and or with more players. So yeah, it's not perfect. And if you're a latency nerd, you are going to notice that. But it is responsive enough that kids and even casual adults should be able to overlook it. Wait, adults? Yes. One of our new writers had two college-age girls over. Weird flex, okay. Anyway, the point is, it was while he was working on this project and they ended up not only trying out the next Playground, but playing Barbie Dance Party for hours, which, okay, less impressed, but it's not as bad as it sounds either. For the blissfully unaware, it's pretty much the Just Dance of Nex. And like much of the rest of their game lineup, it is a small game, but it includes content from surprisingly mainstream artists. They even got a couple of doula peep tracks. I mean, check this out. These are just a few of the many titles that become available on the Nex Cube once you subscribe to Nexus Play Pass, which, uh-oh, this is where that wallet unfriendliness comes in. See, none of these games, even Bluey Buster Move, can be purchased outright. There's no app store, so you either play the five games it comes with, and yes, that whack-a-mole thing we showed you earlier counts as one entire game, or you pay the monthly subscription to get access to the entire game library forever. And you know that your kids are gonna lose their minds if you miss a payment and all of a sudden their Nex Cube turns into a lame cube. Obviously, the easiest way to avoid that disappointment is to just never let them try any of these games in the first place, but let's say you're one of the millions who bought one of these already, what kind of content is in here? I gotta say, if we're measuring based on sheer quantity, I'm actually pretty impressed. There are up to 55 games now, and they've been adding about 20 per year. With that said, most of the games are more like arcade games than like the rich gaming experiences that you might expect on a different console or on a PC. Let's try a couple. Hmm, oh, that's cool. It even tracks your position. Yep, that's Wii Tennis, all right. All right, let's try a different game. Boy, okay, okay. Ooh, dang it. This is, okay, this is not that easy. I guess the upside of the games being kind of simple is that each title only takes up roughly 400 megabytes of space, which helps to stretch out the usefulness of that 64 gigs of onboard storage. Now, at this point, I can practically hear you screaming. Mobile-grade graphics, no raw input tracking, no third-party games, not to mention a subscription. If you want more than five games, who could possibly want this? And the answer is families. A lot of three- to 10-year-olds just wanna jump around and play, and a lot of parents need them to jump around and play in a way that isn't destructive. And in that context, Nex's business model actually starts to make a lot more sense. The playground, huh, may be expensive, not to mention have an ongoing cost, but it's a lot cheaper than a babysitter, and there are no expensive controllers to get lost or broken or gummed up with Cheeto dust. And sure, the gameplay is basic, but it's also easy to pick up, so it's not hard to imagine why this casual console could appeal to both kids and drunken adults. Just maybe don't mix the two. You obviously will need the Play Pass in order to get any value out of this thing, which rockets the cost from $250 to $340 in the first year, and then infinity beyond that since you pay for it forever. But if you look at the community reaction to this thing, it seems like the only ones who are really upset about it are us gamers who didn't even know it existed anyway before it made headlines in December. The non-gamery families who buy this thing seem to absolutely love it. When you compare it to Nintendo, whose console is more expensive, whose games are more expensive, and who wants an annual subscription from you anyway just for basic functionality like cloud saves, at least this is like getting bent over gently with lube. And once you're bored of it, I guess you just cancel your subscription. I mean, I don't love that they want a yearly lock-in to get the better price, that sucks, but it's also kind of par for the course for these types of products, and at least they haven't embraced other crappy industry norms like microtransactions or in-game loot boxes yet. Bottom line then, Nex has built a business model where Ouya and others have failed to compete with the big three, but it's not gonna be right for everyone. And the question that I would be asking myself as a parent and potential buyer is would my kid get bored of going to the arcade every single day? For younger kids, or let's say you're a mom who runs an after-school care program for other parents in the school, the answer might be no, they probably wouldn't get bored. But for everyone else, unless you have very casual friends that are only willing to touch Wii Sports-level experiences and you desperately want to game with them, I think the novelty is likely to wear off pretty quickly. That is, unless one of your drunken friends ends up pregnant. Then the next playground will be there for the next generation to enjoy. Now you can enjoy this segue to our sponsor. Delete.me. There are people out there that are buying and selling the personal information of everyday folks. 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With all the buzz around the other Cubic console, the Steam machine, we DIY'd one of our own and you guys should check it out to get an idea of what kind of performance you can expect.