The Nex Playground console’s basketball game – credit: Nex, released.

Need a late gift idea? A new video game console is flying off the shelves by offering an alternative to parents worried about gaming’s effects on their children.

With no in-app purchases, violence, or online interactions, and all available titles accessible immediately through an annual subscription, the Nex Playground addresses every concern a parent might have.

For more than 30 years, the Nintendo consoles, the Sony Playstation, and the Microsoft Xbox have ruled the console gaming space. The only alternative of any marketable value since the collapse of Sega and Atari consoles has been PC gaming, but given that the Nex Playground has sold 100,000 consoles when pre-order was limited to just 5,000, it’s fair to say there’s a new kid on the console block.

Reminiscent of the Nintendo Wii, all the games on the Nex Playground involve body motion capture, such as sport movements, dancing, or pretending to cut pieces of fruit in half in the introductory title Fruit Ninja.

Again, on the theme of addressing parents’ concerns with gaming, this aspect of the Nex addresses both video game addiction and lack of exercise; you can’t play a game for five hours if it is moderately exhausting.

Reviewers writing for Business Insider got a hold of the console, and report that their kids of all ages loved it. They sent the consoles back to prevent a conflict of interest.

At the moment, Nex features more than 40 games, all of which are available for a subscription of $89 a year. This may seem a major hangup for the “subscription fatigue” in the modern consumer, but it’s actually much less than most parents will spend on different titles, each of which will cost between $40 and $70, in a single year.

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Some of the most popular games in the world are actually free, but come heavily monetized through an in-game currency that can be earned through playing, or that can be purchased directly with a card. The Nex Playground features none of this in-app purchasing, nor is there any open access online interactions between a child and the rest of the gaming world.

GNN has reported often on the links between gaming and positive mental development (or at least lack of negative influence). It’s been shown in studies that homework grades remained unaffected by a preteen’s gaming habit, even if it extended past 3 hours; and that video gaming was associated with higher IQ in children compared to social media use and watching television.

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It’s also been shown that massively multiplayer online video gaming tends to be associated with greater levels of teamwork and problem solving in adult employees.

However, the phenomenon of modern gaming and everything that is attached and associated with it, really can’t be measured in a single study. Sitting, excess screen time, overvaluing digital tokens, and influence of negative interactions online are all things which may in some broad sense be bad for a child’s wellbeing, but which happen to all be absent from the Nex Playground experience.

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