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NEX WANTS TO TURN SMART TVS INTO MOTION GAME CONSOLES

September 14, 2022 | Protocol Entertainment | Portfolio
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Four years after being featured during an Apple keynote, Nex is looking to take
motion games mainstream: The Bay Area-based startup is getting ready to unveil a
number of games that use computer vision to let people control gameplay with
their bodies at the Tokyo Game Show later this month. Think Kinect-like play,
but with smartphones, iPads and laptop cameras.

Nex also plans to bring those games to smart TVs and streaming devices, and will
show its own reference design hardware at IBC in Amsterdam this month. The goal
of those efforts is to “transform the living room into a playground,” Nex
co-founder and CEO David Lee told me during an exclusive conversation last week.

 * Nex was founded by three Apple engineers in 2017.
 * “The mission of the company is to reconnect humanity with the joy of movement
   by turning screen time into active play time,” Lee told me.
 * When Apple introduced the iPhone XS in 2018, the startup got invited on stage
   to demonstrate its HomeCourt app, which was designed to help basketball
   players improve their game.
 * During the pandemic, Nex saw HomeCourt downloads spike, with people using the
   app off the court for fun. That made the company realize there was a much
   broader market for motion games.

Nex soft-launched two more games in recent months, and it’s now getting ready to
unveil additional titles in Tokyo. Lee demonstrated a few of them to me on a
Zoom call — and even though I didn’t compete against him in person, I got the
sense that these types of games can be a lot of fun.

 * Among the titles premiering at Tokyo Game Show is Starri, a rhythm motion
   game that’s kind of like Nex’s take on Beat Saber.
 * There’s also the already-available Party Fowl, a collection of motion
   minigames, including one where players control a helicopter by moving their
   hips like they’re using a hula hoop.
 * “You cannot play this game without a smile on your face,” Lee said after
   handily beating one of his co-workers during the Zoom demo.
 * Other titles to be shown in Tokyo include a cart racing game, a flight
   simulator and Active Arcade.
 * In addition to these games, Nex will also introduce an SDK for motion games,
   aptly called Motion Developer Kit, which is supposed to help outside
   developers build similar games.

Nex’s next big bet is the TV screen. The startup wants to help operators,
TV-makers and others bring its games to the biggest screen in the house.

 * To do this, Nex has partnered with Arm and device-maker SEI Robotics to build
   its own reference design hardware — a small Android TV-based set-top box with
   integrated webcam that can be used to both stream videos and play Nex’s
   games.
 * Lee told me he’s had conversations with multiple manufacturers of smart TVs
   and set-top boxes about bringing its technology directly to their devices.
 * He wouldn’t go into detail about those conversations, but it’s worth noting
   that Nex’s funders include Samsung.
 * One of the companies that Lee could disclose is Comcast’s U.K. subsidiary
   Sky, which is looking to bring the games to its Sky Glass smart TV platform
   in the near future.

Lee also hinted at the possibility that Nex could sell its own hardware by
comparing its reference design kit to Google’s Pixel phones, which are both a
North Star for the Android hardware industry and an actual product. However, he
acknowledged that the startup would never be able to compete with consumer
electronics giants like Samsung, and painted the reference hardware more as a
way to drive adoption of the technology.

“It’s the chicken-egg problem,” Lee said. On the one hand, people will want to
play motion games on TV together, as opposed to crowding around a phone screen.
On the other hand, TV-makers won’t support motion games, and the cameras and
chips needed to run them, if there’s not enough to play. That’s why Nex is
looking to push both hardware and software development simultaneously.

The good news: The tech is ready. When Nex started, its computer vision model
alone was 500MB, and it only ran on top-of-the-line phones. Now, that technology
is much more broadly available, and chips capable of running motion games could
show up in smart TVs within the next two years. “We see the tipping point coming
pretty soon,” Lee said.

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