Nex Playground brings motion-controlled family gaming to the UK and Ireland

Nex Playground is pitching itself as a living-room fix for the screen-time problem parents keep raising: a console that asks children to jump, dodge and swing instead of stare at a controller. The cube-shaped system will launch in the UK and Ireland on 22 June for £269, with five starter games included and a Play Pass needed for most of its 60-plus titles.

Rather than hand players a pad, Nex uses AI and a built-in wide-angle camera to track body movements. The company says the device supports up to four players and can turn a living room into an arcade, gym, dojo, theme park and more, a sales pitch that places it firmly in the same family-entertainment lane once dominated by Nintendo’s Wii and later echoed by Microsoft’s Kinect.

The subscription model is likely to shape how families judge the device. Play Pass costs £90 a year or £45 a quarter, a setup that can look modest beside buying individual games, but still adds a recurring bill to a product marketed as more active play. Parents in earlier coverage have already flagged subscription cost as their biggest hesitation, even as some said the value compared well with buying separate game titles.

Nex launched Playground in the United States in December 2023, and the company has pointed to strong demand there. Circana data showed it was the third best-selling console during Black Friday 2025, outselling Xbox Series S and X hardware. That performance suggests there is an audience for motion-led gaming even as the broader debate over children’s passive screen time continues, with families and policymakers still trying to sort genuine activity from repackaged entertainment.