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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tech Talk with Jess Kelly.
With Renault's award-winning hybrid and full electric lineup, where style meets tech.
Rethink Renault. This is News Talk.
yeah you're very welcome along to tech talk this is jess kelly with you here on news talk coming up over the next hour we'll hear about the new games console specifically aimed at children is it a good idea is it a bad idea is it worth 320 euro we'll let you know plus we will ask what is the best tech device of 2026 so far
As always, you can email the show techtalk at newstalk.com or you'll find me on Instagram at jesskelleynt. And I will jump into that inbox in a wee while and answer some of those tech questions. But I want to start this week with our dear friend, John Riley of TheEffect.net.
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Chapter 2: What is the Nex Playground and how does it work?
John, how are you?
Great, Jess, and you?
I am very well, thank you. We've got plenty to talk through. On Monday's News Talk Breakfast, I was chatting to Anton about a new games console that's aimed at kids. And the reason Anton and I were talking about it is because for most of this year so far, our conversations have been around keeping kids away from technology. But this has a very particular USP. Just talk us through it.
Yeah, so this is called the NEX Playground. So just NEX Playground. And it's coming from a US or Californian based company called NEX. And think of it like a little Rubik's Cube, maybe a bit bigger than a Rubik's Cube, square console with kind of nice light pastel green and yellow colouring. This is really kind of trying to promote active entertainment or active gaming.
So people might remember the Wii from, it's 20 years ago now.
No way it's a 20 years.
2006 is when the Wii blew up. So 20 years were coming up to the Wii. My God, I feel so old. Sweet suffering. Yeah. And then there's also the Microsoft Kinect, which was actually a bit more in line with what this device is offering. It's, it's, it's, basically controller-free gaming.
You put this little cube in front of your TV, it's very user-friendly, it comes in a nice kind of recyclable looking box and you get your HDMI cable with it, you get your power cable and you get your little kind of thin remote, kind of like an Apple TV remote or a Google TV streamer remote that lets you interact with the menus.
You hook it up and then there's a wide-angle lens on the front of the device, one little camera and that's how you interact with these games. Your body becomes the controller like the Xbox Kinect camera from back in the day. Yeah, it's really kind of getting kids back off the couch.
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Chapter 3: What makes the Nex Playground unique compared to traditional consoles?
Yeah. Beat Saber is one of the most famous kind of VR games. Again, you're kind of moving your arms to the music as the items line up on the screen and you have to kind of hit the boxes to kind of end time with the music. So they're all free when you take it out of the box. But what... Next playground we're offering is a thing called the Play Pass.
Now, I know instantly people might go, oh, God, more money. And it technically is. So to really expand on those five free titles, you can pay for the Play Pass, which gives you over 60 additional titles, which is quite a breadth of titles.
Mm-hmm.
That can come in at ā¬49 for a three-month pass, or you can get a year or an annual pass for ā¬99. So, technically, if you want to have access to all of the titles, this device does come with an extra ā¬99 a year subscription service. But, the way I've seen it phrased, and the way I think is a good way of understanding it, that you buy a PlayStation 5, you buy a game, it's ā¬80.
for one game. And then if your kids want another game, it's another ā¬80. I know they have their own subscription services that cost a couple of, you know, maybe ā¬7, ā¬8, ā¬9, ā¬10, ā¬12 a month, depending on the tier. But this is a ā¬99 flat fee for the entire year. Or as I said, if you want to just trial it out for three months, you get the ā¬49 one.
That's unrestricted access to the entire expanded catalogue of ad-free gaming. There's no hidden in-app purchases, which kind of can become a demon in their own right that these kids might be unfortunately buying things without even knowing. And there's no then, with that subscription, actually, you do get automated monthly content drops.
So those titles that you're getting access to with the Play Pass are getting content added to them each and every month as well. So they're kind of expanding their, well, not functionality, but what's available to the gamers, to the players.
In terms of the age range here, because if say, for example, if you have a five-year-old, this might just tick all the boxes in terms of getting them moving, getting them engaged and all the rest. For people who might have, say, a 12-year-old, a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, is there enough breadth of content there to try and engage all the age groups?
Or is there a fear that you're spending 320 on a console per And then the kid's going to grow out of it in six months.
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Chapter 4: How does the Nex Playground promote active gaming for children?
Especially if you have more kids, more than one or two kids, that there's going to be a decent living room or playroom or something needs to be able to accommodate all that extra movement.
But the game, as I said, having those kind of worldwide household names, you know, the Peppers, the Blueys, the Barbies, and then you've got Zumba fitness party kind of aspects to it, whereas my wife is like, you know what, I want to see how this thing works.
This is like a free little gym membership that's in the sitting room now that I can kind of just set up and kind of interact with the TV, but it's actually a bit How did she find it? She thought it was, yeah, it's not going to blow your mind. Obviously, it's, you know, you're not doing any weights liftings or anything like that. But again, it got her going.
It's deceiving in a good way that you don't realise you're doing so much exertion until you're like, God, I'm a bit tired after that. Okay, good. So it's, again, it leads you on a nice kind of path as such to kind of get into that fitness aspect. And there's different levels of difficulty as well. You can really get the sweat levels going as well. Yeah.
Okay, so overall, do we think that this is a bit of a gimmick or is it a console that's going to make a dent? Because I was reading some research that shows it's going down an absolute treat in the US.
Yeah, because just this Christmas gone, the C word in June, I do apologise, but just there in the lead up to Christmas 2025 and Black Friday over in the US, it was outselling the Xbox. It was kind of like PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and then the next Playground was coming in. And for a certain window, I think it was outselling the PlayStation. It was doing huge numbers.
I think they've sold about a million units already in the last couple of years. And now that they're hitting these big gaming markets, Ireland and the UK as of this week, I think they could be onto something here. And I think, you know, as you said at the start, getting the kids away from those sedentary
tablets and even Xboxes and Nintendo Switches if they have to get up to play their favourite character or their bluey title or their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or whatever it is parents are going to be like I'm all for this this is kind of active gaming and it's really they have to get up out of the couch basically
I have to say, I am still not over the fact that the Wii was 20 years ago because I loved the Wii and there was a game that we played all the time. And it was just like a basic sports thing where you could do golf or you could do archery or whatever it was. And they were so fun and engaging.
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Chapter 5: What privacy measures are in place for the Nex Playground's camera?
I'm still on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which came out there back in March over at MWC. Early March. Yeah. And I'm just like, yeah, the camera just blows my mind. I just love it so much.
You haven't been tempted to move back to any of the other devices?
No, I don't think there is. There is the Oppo Find X9 Ultra. So the other kind of big ultra model competing with the likes of the Xiaomi that's kind of I don't know if it's officially available in Ireland. I'm really keen to get my hands on one. I think that's the only thing that would make me jump from Xiaomi. Yeah. But it's right now, I don't know.
I'm curious to see where Pixel goes with the 11s, is it? Yes. The 12s.
What are we on now? The 10. We've got the 10.
The 10 now. Yeah. See what the 11 comes out in August. Yeah. And yeah. What have we got? Yeah. The first six months were pretty wild. I'm trying to keep track of everything as well with my own life and things happening. Yeah.
But it's funny, though, because I was thinking about it, that you have gone to many more phone launches and you've had, as you said, the Xiaomi's and the Oppo's and all the rest. And it's just funny how in recent years we've gone from the new Samsung came out in February and that's top of the list. Things have definitely shifted.
And one thing that struck me, I think it was the third or fourth time last time you were on the show, When you detailed the advancements in the battery tech that's coming from the Chinese manufacturers.
Yeah, that's it.
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