During last November’s Black Friday week, gaming console Nex Playground outsold Xbox devices in the U.S.
For those in the hardcore gaming community, the first response to that stat might be, what is Nex Playground? But if you have a child between the ages of three and 12, it’s likely you’ve at least heard of the device, which has a family-friendly and fitness focus (think Xbox’s defunct Kinetic or Nintendo’s Wii) that’s pulling in partnerships with top brands including Hasbro, Mattel, Paramount and BBC Studios.
“We are actually solving some new problems,” Nex co-founder and CEO David Lee told Variety during CES 2026, just as the company was announcing its plans for a major U.K. and European expansion and revealed it had more than 650,000 units in 2025 alone.
“The Nex mission is to connect family and friends who like to play and just keep discovering and find out what kind of problem we solve for families,” Lee said. “And after a few years in market, then we are there. And all the IP partners who have jumped on board, it’s because they see something in us in that they can bring the IP to the family with young kids in some really healthy and special ways. With ‘Bluey,’ they found how we can get kids to do [the game] Keepy Uppy. Then we have Ninja Turtles and we have Barbie and all kinds of IP joined the platform and helped lift the platform up. And then, all of a sudden, people are like, ‘Wow, who are these guys?’ It’s years in the making.”
The core demographic for Nex Playground console is families with children ages three to 12 years old, but Lee says they really target a much bigger audience than that.
“First is families with young kids, families with multiple kids, family with neurodivergent kids, families who live in more extreme weather, family who are little more mindful about the content they play, more sports and fitness-minded families, multi-generation families,” Lee said. “You create something that’s very accessible so that a lot of people can come together and play. It’s like, wow, my six-year-old kid is playing with a great grand mother at 90 years old.”
The Nex Playground console, which costs $250, operates on a subscription model for its service Play Pass features. For $89 per year, customers get access to a growing library of more than 55 motion, dance, fitness and educational games, which include both Nex Originals and collaborations with partners like Hasbro, Sesame Workshop, NBCUniversal and, coming this summer, Dude Perfect.
“We have a subscription business model, and parents actually love that model because they pay one time in a whole year and they don’t worry about advertising,” Lee said. “And we have a different relationship with our customer base. We listen to them, see what kind of problem they want us to solve, and we solve the problem better. We go to our Facebook community, we have very active community on Facebook, and they have a lot to ask for and they really give us the guidance and can help shape the product direction.”
Though the boost in sales is definitely welcomed by the business, Lee maintains his company’s mission is not to outsell Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo.
“Our goal is just to make a better product for them,” Lee said. “And we do our distributions and make sure that people who want a product would have access to it. And that’s the goal. It’s the first time in the last 24 years there’s somebody new on Thanksgiving week take one of the top three spots. We sold more units than Xbox in a week, but this is not our goal. Our goal is always be very customer-aligned, serve the customer better, and make that product available to more people and keep building.”