When it comes to social gaming nothing beats a good board game. Yes, you can have fun playing your video games online, but it doesn’t have the same dynamic as sitting around a table with close friends or family members and getting to share in some laughs, tears, and plenty of anger and frustration when their competitive natures come out and you start arguing over the rules. What’s not to like?
The biggest challenge with board games is that they can be incredibly expensive – given their many printed components – and require a lot of storage space to store, if you’re one of those people that like to collect and play a lot of games. Arcade1Up – known for its many arcade cabinets – has a solution for some of those problems with the creation of its Infinity Game Table, which is essentially a large touch screen that comes with many officially licensed digital tabletop games, like Chess, Monopoly, Scrabble, Pandemic, and Ticket to Ride for people to play on all from the comfort of one device.
The company launched a Kickstarter for their new concept, which has turned out to be a massive success, with the company now officially bringing the product to market. The table comes in two different sizes in 24-inch or 32-inch, with the former featuring some rather massive bezels, while the latter model features some more appropriately sized edges. The devices themselves are quite hefty, weighing in at 20 and 27kgs respectively. Not the kind of thing you want to lug around, but as its intended for most home use on a table and is designed more for robustness against the inevitable drink spillage, it makes sense that the company is focusing on practicality over style with its initial models.
The screen sizes might feel a little small if you compare it to the size of many board games themselves but offers a decent enough playing experience that at least exceeds what any other tablet would give you. The table will launch with more than 40 games included, plus include other unique experiences like a puzzle app, a colouring book app, a sudoku app, and a word search app, to extend that family fun to all different tastes.
For now, the devices are only available in the US from July 17th and will be seemingly expensive with the 24-inch model selling for $599 (R8600) and the 32-inch selling for $799 (R11 500). If you consider the size of the screens and the amount you would pay for 40 different board games though, then the price starts to seem more reasonable. And with the possibility of being able to download several more games over time, it could certainly be the device that every board game could invest in to save themselves a lot of space and money. Hopefully, this is something we could eventually get in South Africa, where board games are even pricier thanks to expensive import costs.
Last Updated: June 25, 2021
