Google gives you more ways to play with your Nest Hub with new Games Lobby

It's launching ten new games, with more to come.

What you need to know

• Google this week launched a new Games Lobby for its Nest Hub and other smart displays.
• It's designed to serve as your one-stop hub for Assistant-powered games.
• The company is also launching 10 new games, with more to come soon.

As Google pushes forward with its plans to make its lineup of smart displays more than just glorified YouTube screens, the company has increasingly focused on adding more interactivity. A large part of this is games, and the company this week rolled out a new Games Lobby features for its smart displays.

As the name suggests, it's designed to be the one-stop hub for all your gaming needs, with a revamped UI and better discoverability for the best-ranked and most featured games. The change falls in line with a larger redesign of the Nest Hub UI earlier in the year, with an added emphasis on tabbed navigation.

That's not all, though. Alongside the redesign, Google's made your Nest Hub Max, already one of the best smart displays out there, even more fun to play around with over the holidays with the launch of 10 new games and more to come soon.

Most of these are word puzzles, such as Horizontal Crosswords, Game of Words, Voice Quest, Power of Words, and Daily Word Wheel, but the great thing about them is that they're all Assistant-powered, meaning you can play the game with just voice commands as you focus on getting that massive Christmas dinner going.

Other new additions include brain teasers, such as Daily Brain Trainer and Brainwash Puzzles.

There are also a bunch of interesting new experiences for the little ones, like My Smart Pet and Hey Fish, which let them care for a virtual pet. And when it's time for bed, interactive storytelling experiences from Shimmer and Shine and ABCMouse should keep them plenty entertained till they fall asleep.

While having more fun over the holidays is great, better video calls might be even more important this year, what with the pandemic keeping everyone at home. Google has a solution for that too, with Zoom integration for the Nest Hub Max finally rolling out earlier this month, as well as better video conferencing on Google's own Meet.

Nest Hub Max

$229 at Best Buy $229 at Walmart

Having a Nest Hub Max in the living room will ensure plenty of fun over the holidays, with new games and a better UI to go with it. The large screen and the new Zoom integration also makes catching up with loved ones easier than ever before.