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You might have heard of the Nex Playground if you have your ear to the ground on recent gaming hardware developments. Aimed at a family audience, this tiny device is all about controller-free motion-based gaming, and it has already sold over a million units since its launch at the close of 2023.
Now, the team behind the device are setting a lofty target for themselves – to match the sales performance and impact of one of Nintendo's most popular home gaming systems.
"Our ambitions are as big as the Wii," says Nex Playground's head of international, Tom Kang, during a chat with Game Developer.
That's quite a target. The Wii sold more than 101 million units, and is only outmatched in the home console arena by the PS2 (160 million) and Switch (155.92 million, and counting).
In contrast, the Nex Playground has sold "around 1 million units" in the United States since 2023, but Kang stresses that the figure should be much higher, as the console sold out in 2024 and 2025 and missed the "entire holiday season" last year as a result. It still managed to outsell both the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S over Black Friday.
Things are looking up now, despite a price increase due to rising component costs. "Right now we're growing way faster than we were last year. But our supply chain is much better, so our expectations are much greater," says Kang.
A key part of getting even remotely close to closing that 100 million sales gap between Nex Playground and Wii will involve global expansion, with the Nex Playground hitting the UK soon before being released in mainland Europe and parts of Asia.
Nex Playground's games are distributed digitally and available via a quarterly ($49 / £45 / €49) or annual ($89 / £90 / €99) 'Play Pass' subscription. The console comes with five pre-loaded games for free.
The system is expected to hit UK store shelves in June of this year.