Smelogs Playground

IGN snootily turned down an offer to review the Nex Playground around its 2023 release. And why not? It’s a casual games console from a company with no cachet in the space – a colorful little cube whose primary input method is your own body, via an ultra-wide camera lens on the front of the system. And yet, like the Wii before it, this underestimated machine (scoffed by elite gaming media types everywhere!) managed to outsell Microsoft’s Xbox consoles over the 2025 holidays. Were we, the gaming media, wrong? So now, here I am as one of IGN’s child-having freelance writers, with a review of the

This family-friendly game console gets kids moving, learning, and playing together

While Microsoft itself just set a record for the biggest single-day market cap swing in history, the company's Xbox division is struggling. How will new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma turn things around? In a memo to staff obtained by The Verge, Sharma shared the top Xbox priorities for the current fiscal year and beyond. These included four main buckets--Core, Content, Creation, and Connection. Some of the efforts include making Minecraft "the world's creator platform" and getting Xbox games to become "global franchises." She also wants to "strengthen" the Xbox platform, "led by console" and undertake