Reader, I'm stumped. There's a new games console on the market, it's not made by any of the big studios, and as far as I can tell the first that anyone heard of it was when it went on sale on Tuesday. It's called Board, it costs $500, and it blurs the line between a tablet computer and a tabletop board game. And I can't work out if it's the work of a mad genius, or just mad.
Board is a 24" touch screen computer designed to lay flat on a tabletop, board game style. Like a games console, this is set up to run games designed specifically for the platform - it comes with 12, which are made by (unspecified) 'Top Game Developers'. You interact with these games using grabbable physical components - Board reads the footprint of each piece to work out what it is, and then does something sparkly.
There's a lot of interesting technology in this design, but the selling point is very simple - this is a games console which multiple players use by gathering around a table. The videos all over the Board website make it amply clear that it's selling itself on togetherness. Is togetherness better than a Switch 2, though? That's the $500 question.
Or the $699 question, in fact - the $499 price point is only for early adopters. Now if I thought Board was trying to take a bite out of the mainstream video game market at that price, this opinion piece would be a nonstop dunk. But it's got even an even more audacious plan - it's trying to reach an audience that mainstream game consoles can't reach by offering something that they can't offer.
Audacious. Which is on form for the entrepreneur heading the project, Brynn Putnam. Her first business, Mirror, sold a $1500 'smart mirror' that broadcast live fitness classes into owner's homes. Fitness brand Lululemon paid $500 million to acquire the company, and - critically for my judgment of any tech start-up - Mirror is still running today.
Board isn't unprecedented. We can look back at the 1970s arcade tables - which often did double-duty as regular tables when hosted in pubs and bars - as its oldest ancestor. Dance Dance Revolution is probably the earliest really successful 'tactile' videogame, though the Nintendo DS is probably a closer relative to Board. And as well as playing videogames with our hands, we've been busy digitalising our board games - all the best board games have digital versions now, and they play particularly well on touch-screen devices.
Still, I can see problems. Board is, apparently, extremely rugged, but will that stop it being fatally allergic to spilled juice? The videos all show it situated on a table, which makes me wonder if it heats up like a bread oven and poses a fire risk when it's sitting on the carpet. How many times does a drunk aunt have to sit on it, or sugar-high child have to bang their head off it, before it cracks? How much does it weigh, and will I put my back out if I have to move it into storage?
At $699, it's half the price of many 24" drawing tablets, the nearest product I can think of that's already on the market. So is it priced as a loss-leader? If the plan is to make a profit from the the game library, that's a potentially fatal pinch-point. Any entrant to the console market needs plenty of games to attract customers, and plenty of customers to attract game developers, or choke to death.
But perhaps there is something here. The games look fun; having your own personal arcade table at home would be neat. Besides, I've seen plenty of DIY projects by DnD dungeon masters mounting TV screens into tables so that they can use their favorite Virtual Tabletop as a game map during in-person DnD sessions - the nerds yearn for a cyberspace they can touch. Maybe this is it?
Screw it. I'm asking them for a review copy.
Have you ever seen a really good implementation of digital tools in an analogue game - or physical components in a digital game? What about a howlingly bad one? Let us know in the official Wargamer Discord community.