How Much Would You Pay For A Board That Promised Infinite Tabletop Games…And How Much Would You Pay To Keep It Running?

As venture capitalists continue to experiment with the wild untamed AI Frontier, new ideas are thrown at us daily, some better conceived than others. Some seek to solve a problem that didn’t exist, while others seem to have a sole purpose of creating problems of their own. One particular product promises to “break” the tabletop game industry…but what it wants to put in its place isn’t any better.

Above is the EverBoard, an all-purpose board game tablet that promises to be the only game board you’ll ever need. It instantly loads layouts for many popular traditional board games, as long as they fall under the Hasbro licensed umbrella: Monopoly, Connect 4, Chutes and Ladders, Scrabble and others. But if you feel like playing something different….say you feel the urge to play a game that literally does not exist…the EverVibe Game Creator can vibe it up for you. It’ll create any type of game with a prompt, and if you like the game you can save it to the cloud or upload it to EverVibe’s community library. There you can find hundreds of games vibe-coded by others, and parent company EverBoard says they’ll keep it all moderated so you won’t see anything naughty. (I just bet they plan to moderate it with AI as well, and if they think that’s foolproof, we have news for them…)

It would certainly be easier to store the EverBoard than it would a collection of dozens of tabletop game boxes. But its largest obstacle to widespread adoption is how much it costs to bring home. The board carries a $499.99 price tag and it doesn’t stop there. This is the kind of cursed object that demands you keep feeding it money to stay functional, the kind of thing doomsayers warn our refrigerators and toasters will be doing in the apocalyptic future. Since the board games are in the cloud they have to be downloaded from a service, and to keep access to that service you have to pay a fee of $29 for three months or $99 annually.

All that demanded money is what will keep the EverBoard from ever taking off. You know what a simple, centuries-old, wireless board game doesn’t do? THIS. The picture may not change but it will always work, it won’t lose functionality if the power goes out or the wifi goes down, and it WON’T CONSTANTLY DEMAND CASH FROM YOU. Once you’ve paid the base price, the fun is free! EverBoard can’t compete with that.

There’s one more thing: it’s not on Amazon. EverBoard is a Best Buy exclusive this holiday season. We wish it luck but this is probably the only story we’ll ever write about it.