Nex Playground Console Price Rises to $299 Starting April 1

The Nex Playground, a Kinect-like device aimed at families that made headlines by outselling the Xbox over the holidays last year, will cost $299 starting on April 1, a $50 bump.

CEO and co-founder David Lee acknowledged the increase wasn't welcome news, citing a rise in the cost of key components, specifically memory (DDR) and storage (eMMC), driven in part by the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure reshaping global supply and demand. Nex says it worked to absorb those cost increases for as long as possible, but at current levels it was no longer sustainable. The price of Play Pass will remain the same.

The price hike marks a striking reversal for a device that built its following on affordability. The Nex Playground launched at $199 and was later increased to $249, still selling for $199 on shopping holidays like Prime Day. At $299, it now sits closer to the lower end of the traditional gaming console market: an Xbox Series S runs $399 and a Nintendo Switch 2 goes for $449.

The market performance that preceded the hike is what made the price conversation unavoidable. Nex Playground had already announced a price increase to $299 starting April 1 due to rising component costs. According to Circana data, sales of the Nex Playground surpassed Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S during the Black Friday shopping week. The growth curve behind that milestone was steep: in 2023, Nex Team shipped 5,000 units, then sold 150,000 the following year after being stocked in US retailers Walmart, Target, and BestBuy. Thanks to huge sales in 2025, 635,000 consoles and counting, the company is closing in on 800,000 units sold to date and expects the figure to hit 1 million in the first half of 2026.

The company behind the device is itself a startup story. Nex Team was founded in 2017 by a group of Apple veterans led by David Lee, who had earlier founded online spreadsheet service EditGrid, acquired in 2008, before joining Apple. The subscription business model was central to the plan from the beginning. "A lot more users are open to subscriptions now," Lee has said. "It's fantastic as a business model. Back in the day, Wii expanded the market, but a lot of the audience didn't know Mario. They bought Wii Fit, Wii Sports and they didn't buy many other Nintendo games. Those customers were not very profitable."

The hardware includes a starter pack of five games playable out of the box without any subscription. To unlock the full game catalog and keep getting new releases, Nex sells a paid Play Pass. Play Pass costs $49 for three months or $89 for 12 months. The recommended retail price increases to $299 starting April 1, while the Play Pass price stays unchanged.

Despite the price climb, demand has consistently outpaced supply. As of today, Amazon shows availability, Walmart shows availability, Target shows availability, while Best Buy and Sam's Club list the console as limited. "It was really important to keep the price affordable, because we serve families," Lee has said, a commitment the company is now testing against the economics of a global components crunch it did not create but can no longer absorb alone.