Arcade1Up
Arcade1Up, which revitalized the home arcade scene with its three-quarter-size arcade machines, is launching a new design called the Infinity Game Table. Rather than emulating the look and feel of a vintage arcade cabinet, the Infinity Game Table looks like a large slate-style tablet, and is designed to sit on a coffee or dining table, or on its own custom detachable legs.
The display points straight up, allowing for players to sit around it. So far, Arcade1Up says it will have a large library of digital content from multiple publishers, including Hasbro, which strongly suggests that this will be pitched primarily as a digital board game table. With board games and tabletop games enjoying a renaissance right now, that could be an interesting pitch to bridge the divide between board games and video games. Also promised is a variety of puzzles, card games, coloring books and digital comics, some preloaded, some available via an app store.
Both 24- and 32-inch touchscreen models will be available, with some form of what Arcade1Up calls “tactile feedback,” which could mean a taptic or rumble response in specific apps. Built-in Wi-Fi will allow up to six players to play remotely from their own systems.
Arcade1Up
If the concept looks familiar, you might remember a short-lived trend called tabletop PCs, dating to around 2013. These were big slate-style touchscreen PCs that could also lie flat and play games. The Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon 27, for example, included Monopoly, a poker app and other games, but these systems were expensive ($1,500 and up) and never caught on.
The Infinity Game Table does not have a price, but most of the rest of the Arcade1Up line runs $300-$500. The project just has a landing page for now, and is launching on Kickstarter sometime this year.