The Story
Body motion as the controller. No gear required.
In December 2023, a small cube roughly the size of a Rubik's Cube went on sale at Target for $199. It had no cartridges, no controllers, no subscription required to start. You plugged it into your TV, stood in front of its camera, and your body became the game. That device - the Nex Playground - was co-built by Reggie Chan, a software engineer from Hong Kong who spent twenty years getting to that moment.
The path was not a straight line. Chan studied software engineering at The University of Hong Kong from 2000 to 2004, graduating into an internet landscape where "collaborative documents" meant emailing attachments. So he co-founded EditGrid - a browser-based spreadsheet with real-time collaboration. This was 2004. Google Sheets launched two years later, in 2006. EditGrid got there first.
"Nex was formed by second-time entrepreneurs with expertise from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta."
- Nex Team Official BioApple noticed. In June 2008, the company acqui-hired EditGrid specifically for iWork.com development - Apple's own cloud productivity suite. Chan crossed the Pacific to Cupertino and spent roughly nine years as a Software Engineering Manager inside one of the most secretive and methodically excellent engineering organizations in the world. He learned the craft of building at scale, with the discipline Apple demands.
In 2017, Chan left with David Lee and Tony Sung to start again. Their company, NEX Team Inc., was founded in San Jose - one foot in Silicon Valley, another in Hong Kong. The initial product, HomeCourt, was an AI basketball training app that used a phone's camera to track a player's shots: release angle, release height, leg position, shot arc. It was the kind of application that felt like a magic trick until you understood the computer vision underneath.
The NBA partnership followed in 2019. So did the Apple Design Award. When the 2020 NBA Draft Combine needed to go virtual during the pandemic, it used HomeCourt. Mark Cuban had backed the seed round alongside Steve Nash and Jeremy Lin. When Nash demoed HomeCourt's "Shot Science" feature at Apple's September 2018 iPhone XS keynote - on the same stage Apple typically reserved for its own executives - it was one of the few times a Hong Kong-founded startup had received that platform.
By 2021, Nex raised $25M in a Series B led by Blue Pool Capital, with Samsung Ventures, SparkLabs, and Susquehanna participating. Simu Liu, Albert Pujols, Thierry Henry, and Sabrina Ionescu joined as supporters. The team launched Active Arcade - a motion-game app for smartphones and laptops. Still no hardware. Still body motion, camera-powered, no gear needed.
Then came the pivot to hardware. When Nex couldn't find a willing platform partner to take motion gaming seriously, the team decided to build the platform themselves. The Nex Playground launched in December 2023. The 3-inch cube contains an ultra-wide-angle camera, an 8-core ARM processor, 16GB RAM, and 64GB storage. It tracks up to 18 body points per player, for up to four players simultaneously, in real time. No wires. No controllers. Just your body, a TV, and a camera the size of a paperweight.
The sales trajectory borders on the absurd. Nex sold 5,000 units in 2023. Then 150,000 in 2024. Then 600,000 in 2025 - a 40x increase in two years - crossing $150M in annual revenue and achieving profitability. Around one million Nex Playground units are now in US households. TIME named Nex to its 100 Most Influential Companies list for 2026, in the Entertainment category. The company's next expansion targets are Europe and the UK.
Chan's career is a study in patience compounded. The skills he built over two decades - computer vision, real-time mobile software, Apple-grade product discipline - converged in a small cube that teaches kids to jump, punch, and dodge in their living rooms. The children who played with the Wii as kids are now parents. Reggie Chan built them a new version of that joy, and this time the hardware actually shipped.
What They Built
Three products, one through-line: your body is the controller.
By the Numbers
From 5,000 to 600,000 units in two years.
Key Milestones
Investors & Partners
Career Timeline
Twenty years of building toward motion.
Education
Built on engineering foundations.
Personality Traits
Tech Stack (Nex)
Recognition & Awards
Outselling Xbox was not the beginning.
Closer Look
The details that make the story.
EditGrid was a real-time collaborative spreadsheet in 2004 - two years before Google Sheets launched. Chan built it in Hong Kong. Apple bought it. Sometimes being early just means you're on the right track, waiting for the world to catch up.
The Nex Playground console is literally the size of a Rubik's Cube: 3 inches on each side. It contains an 8-core ARM processor and tracks 18 body points per player simultaneously, for up to 4 players at once - all without a single wearable device.
Nex sold 5,000 units in 2023 - barely enough to fill a high school gymnasium. Two years later, they had sold 600,000 in a single year and were outselling Microsoft's gaming hardware during the biggest shopping week of the year.
Among Nex's investors: the NBA (2019), Will Smith's Dreamers Fund, Alibaba Entrepreneurship Fund, Mark Cuban, Steve Nash, Jeremy Lin, Samsung Ventures, Simu Liu, and Albert Pujols. That's one very unusual cap table for a motion-gaming startup from Hong Kong.
Nex has secured content partnerships with Sesame Workshop, Bluey, and Peppa Pig - positioning the Playground firmly in the living rooms of families with young children. The device has a clean interface, no dark patterns, and content designed for kids aged 5 and up.
Chan co-founded Nex with David Lee (also an Apple alum who had previously sold a startup to Apple) and Tony Sung. All three are described as "second-time entrepreneurs" - a category that tends to produce significantly better outcomes than first-timers.
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