Arcade1Up's Infinity Game Table is weirdly charming
Gaming Hardware
Speaker 1: I play game consoles in my hands. I play game consoles on the TV. What about a game console? That's a coffee table, the infinity game table. Here's how it works. C that's Bridget care, got an exclusive look at the infinity game table back at CES at the beginning of the year, and gotta look at, uh, how the interaction works and what the games are like. And it looked pretty interesting. I was super excited to try it for myself, but I really didn't know if it would [00:00:30] live up to my board game expectations.
Speaker 1: So I didn't expect to fall in love with the infinity game table. This is made by arcade one up. Now, if you've seen any of those arcade cabinets that have been on sale for years, that you build, uh, by yourself, miss Pacman, that type of stuff, same company, but the [00:01:00] infinity game table is a different concept. It is a kind of a game console that has a whole bunch of board games that you can download onto this giant tablet thing with legs that sits in your living room. The infinity game table starts at $650, which is expensive for most people. There's also an $850 version, depending on the screen size. I'm looking at the six 50 version with a 24 inch display. The 8 51 has a 32 inch display, but similar [00:01:30] dimensions. So what that means is that you are basically seeing what all the game tables look like, and they're kind of short.
Speaker 1: So this is not a table that you would set up. Let's say to have caught coffee on in your dining room. This is a coffee table for your sofa. It's about sofa height. And we found that, uh, you know, it works best that way. If you're furniture shopping, that's important to know. And the dimensions you can see right here are not that big, which is kind of nice because it can tuck away, but it's big enough that you could [00:02:00] set drinks on it. In fact, it comes with little cardboard coaster and that BELE around the display means that the screen isn't filling the whole thing, but you could put things like remotes or drinks all around the edges, as long as you're okay with possibilities of the spill. I mean, it's a whole glass cover here, um, that you could wipe up, but I'd be pretty careful with stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Infini game table is an idea that we've kind of seen before. We've seen these [00:02:30] gigantic tablet displays in the past, that propose to be kind of a communal family table or interactive board games. It's also kind of like a giant iPad. The games that you download are coming from a game store that's provided by arcade one up. Now, I don't know where that's going in the future right now. A whole bunch of games are provided for free with purchase. And it writes about 38 games right now. And growing. There are some extra games that might be popping up over time. [00:03:00] I found a few pop up since I've been playing it. A lot of the games are either Hasbro licenses. So games like trivial pursuit, monopoly, Scrabble, uh, sorry. Clue is coming those types of games or they're very classic games like back Gamon, uh, chess check solitaire, uh, that little Maja game where you match tiles.
Speaker 1: A lot of those can start feeling like the freeware games that you might get on your phone or things you might find in [00:03:30] like a hotel lobby randomly somewhere with some interactive game table. So I don't know how exciting those will be for everyone. Things like dice rolls and other animations are in nowhere near as smooth as some of the ones I've seen on iPad board games, or even on the Nintendo switches clubhouse games, which is a great board game compilation. But this ended up winning my family over in a way that I did not expect the ability to gather around this game table is very inviting. And the fact that you don't have to pull out other games and 'em up [00:04:00] makes it really simple to dive in. We have a ton of board games in our home, like dozens and dozens of games.
Speaker 1: And we play a lot of video games too. And yet this still ended up, uh, getting my wife and my kids really interested, even without me talking about it, where they would keep coming back and playing the game. It kind of feels like we had a little micro vacation, like were on a cruise ship or playing somewhere else, but it was in our living room. And the appeal of this type of a table might be more interesting than the arcade cabinets. If [00:04:30] you're the sort of person that's not really into arcade games, arcade one ups cabinets can get really expensive, um, easily $500, um, or more for some of their new models. And they come with about maybe four games. If that the ability to play more games on this 38 games, and that will grow, could be really exciting. Oh, I didn't even mention this thing is a gigantic rumble mechanism inside the table.
Speaker 1: So on some games, this thing makes a giant buzzing rumble sound [00:05:00] for games like Aship when you make a hit or when you miss something in operation, it's a super weird edition. I found that it was like, kind of freaked us out and I didn't really need it. And I have no idea when it's gonna pop up in games. Now our kid won up is offering these games for free, but some of these games will be paid for games like ticket to ride and which I've not played. And those are really cool board games sound like there'll be an extra fee. I don't know how that works. If you're gonna have to enter your credit card number [00:05:30] or do something like that. It's a little bit weird. Uh, I did have to set up an account when I did this. It was one individual account.
Speaker 1: And that's one of my knocks on this is that for families, there were no individual player pro. So you'd expect that you'd be able to keep a record over time of how well you did in back gamin or how you did in monopoly. And that's not there yet. Our kid one up might be making those software adjustments over time. I already saw one software update to monopoly, but I can't tell how dedicated they're going to be to [00:06:00] improving the table. You might be stuck with what you've got and what you've got right now are a bunch of pretty entertaining games, not perfect. You know, there are some games that I feel like the alignment, the player turns the roles, even the way the touchscreen interface works are not all my ideal, but they're, they're generally playable and easy to learn even for a kid that's eight years old in the house.
Speaker 1: And we found that we were diving into the games and loving them. Some of our favorites have been monopoly. Sorry, definitely [00:06:30] back gamin. Um, am a fellow we picked up recently, I'm telling you this table, like yeah, once we, I mean, do you need something like this? Absolutely not obviously. And that's the weird part is it's a luxury item, but I've seen people spend money on weirder things in their lives. And the fact that this is an actual table, plus the gaming makes the price a little more understandable. I don't know how durable this will be over time. [00:07:00] I don't know how the software updates will handle over time. Those are concerns, but putting together the table was extremely easy. The metal legs snap into the base and that's it. And you flip it up and there are rubbery bumpers around the edges, which I appreciate.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing feels sturdy. There are some possibilities of a updates to this. There are USB ports on the side. I don't know what those are for maybe game controllers. There's a microSD card slot. Although the onboard storage on this is enough that [00:07:30] I was able to download all 38 games and still have a bunch of room spare. And there's a slot for a battery. You know, you have to plug this into an AC outlet in order to use it and keep that in mind. You may have to snake that under a rug or tuck it to the side. It's not ideal. Uh, having a battery inside apparently will give it three to five hours of, of charge on its own, but I didn't get a battery with this. And I don't know exactly how those are going to be available. So if you're interested in classic game and you like the [00:08:00] idea of a conversation piece, that you're gonna sit around and play four anywhere from two players to even up to six players for some games, this is about as interesting an option as I can think of there really aren't interactive board game, cough tables that exist in the world at this price, except for this one.
Speaker 1: Could others in the future, might you want to prop your iPad up on a chair instead? Sure. There might be, but I really like the proposition of the infinity game table. [00:08:30] I just don't know if it's gone far enough for everything that I would love. And I don't know if it's gonna have all the indie board games that I'd want on it. Oh, and did I mention that this is online playable? It is. You need to have other people with the infinity game table. So good luck with that. I'm not sure how many of those exist in the world. We're gonna keep playing board games on this because we find it strangely appealing. It's the largest game console I've ever used. And it's the only one that's going to probably stay in my living room and not annoy people. Anyway, if you [00:09:00] have more question or comments, please check below and thanks for watching.
