A Nintendo Wii-like console that's giving the PS5 and Xbox Series X a run for their money wants to succeed where the Mario maker failed: "We are standing on a giant’s shoulder"

Nex Playground's CEO says the company has a plan to avoid the same fate as the Nintendo Wii, where many owners bought only a handful of games.

Even as someone whose job it is to know about the goings on in the games industry, the Nex Playground came out of nowhere for me. The first thing I had heard about it was last month; it was the second-best-selling console of the week ending in November 22, beating out the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S – only coming in behind the Nintendo Switch 2 in the US. This little cube (a game cube, if you will) grabbed the attention of many with this feat, given that you'd be hard-pressed to find many months when the top three aren't some form of Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo.

This attention led to an interview with The Game Business, where Nex CEO David Lee spoke about the company's plan to sustain a casual gaming audience, given that previous attempts like the Wii and Xbox Kinect had attach rate issues.

"Nintendo expanded the audience with Wii. When you expand the audience, and they want different things, and they only buy Wii Fit, Wii Sports, and not many others… that’s a bit of a problem," Lee explains, adding, "Nintendo obviously has a really great strategy on how they want to serve the audience. But, from our perspective, we want to build something sustainable. And if we build a platform and people come in and buy a couple of games and that’s it…the whole system is not sustainable."

Lee says that for Nex, "One of the most important things we should do is learn from history and try not to commit the same limitations, and that’s why we have a subscription model." He explains, "It’s very important that we set ourselves up to serve our customer continuously with new innovations, that is how the whole system can sustain," adding, "But it started with Wii. We are standing on a giant’s shoulder."

Unexpected PS5 and Xbox Series X rival is only $250 because “we are not going to compete with high-end graphics.”