LeapFrog has been making educational toys for children since 1995, but its latest product is its most ambitious – and riskiest – yet.

LeapTV is a games console aimed at 3-8 year-old children, which will go on sale in the UK in October for £119.99, with games available as physical cartridges or downloads, and a range of educational videos too.

The console will ship with a controller that morphs between a joypad and a Wiimote-style pointer, as well as a camera providing Kinect-like motion-sensing features.

Many of its games will use all three control systems, and all will have some form of educational twist to their gameplay, with maths, reading and science to the fore. Several also aim to get children off the sofa and jumping around.

As LeapTV pre-orders started in the UK, LeapFrog’s product expert Nicole Adam gave me a demonstration of the device’s interfaces and some of its launch games, while explaining the philosophy behind it.

The company has clearly put a lot of thought into the device, from its small-hands-friendly controller to its simple carousel-based menu screens, with audio prompts and character-heavy game icons designed to be accessible even to early readers.

“We want independence for children, so they feel empowered to navigate it on their own, even if they don’t read. And to also free parents from the setup process each and every time a child wants to play a game,” said Adam.

Parents can create five user profiles for individual children, with another slot reserved for guests – friends coming round to play.

LeapTV games will cost £24.99 each in cartridge form, although prices will start at £3.50 from the console’s “App Center” store. Parents will access the latter from their own computers or mobile devices, with purchases then downloaded to the LeapTV over Wi-Fi.

Adam showed three games. LeapFrog Sports takes its cues from Nintendo’s Wii Sports, with motion-based mini-games based on skateboarding, karate, swimming, baseball, bowling and other sports.

Maths and shape recognition are part of the gameplay: for example when children have to punch the air to hit virtual blocks with rectangles on, while leaving blocks with circles or triangles.

Dance & Learn is inspired by the Kinect-led resurgence in dancing games on adult consoles: another collection of mini-games, this time based around music. The one I was shown involved responding to action commands – freeze, reach, hop, “squirm like a wiggly worm” – freezing between each one.

“We did a lot of console-specific research with children, and found a lot of them saying ‘I want to play Wii Sports or dancing games, but they’re not right for me’,” said Adam. “We saw children wanting to play these kinds of games on adult consoles, but having difficulty.”

Meanwhile, Disney Sofia the First is based on the popular TV brand: more mini-games, including a Temple Run-ish horse-riding game that involves dodging between three lanes while collecting magic gems, letters and numbers.

“We will have eight cartridges available at launch, but by the end of the year we will have more than 100 games and videos,” said Adam. Besides Sofia, there’ll be games based on brands including Spider-Man and Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

“Every game has a producer and a learning designer working on the title and making sure we’re integrating the curriculum in the right places,” she said. “We’ll have reading games, maths games, science games, problem-solving, creativity... It’s a broad selection, and all the content is reviewed by educational experts.”

LeapFrog clearly has lots of experience in making educational technology, including apps and games through its series of LeapPad tablets, which have attracted support from some of the biggest children’s brands. LeapTV has clearly been created with a firm emphasis on the needs of children and parents.

And yet... It’s going to face several tough challenges once it’s available, which can be summarised in three words: Minecraft, Skylanders and tablets.

Minecraft remains hugely popular among children, as do the YouTube channels exploring it. Stampy, for example, was the fourth biggest YouTube channel in July with 199.6m video views. Many of the children playing on adult consoles like PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are playing Minecraft.

A children’s games console without this game may lack credibility among its target market, then. While developer Mojang may be rolling in revenues, it has a lot on its plate developing the existing computer, console and mobile versions. If a deal can be done to get Minecraft on LeapTV, it would be an important coup for LeapFrog.

Second: Skylanders. Activision’s children’s game franchise has been a big, billion-dollar hit with children, with production values considerably beyond what we’re likely to see on LeapTV. Won’t LeapFrog’s device feel like trading down?

“If you’re giving your child something they can do and enjoy, and you know there’s an educational layer on top of it, they’ll probably feel better about it rather than a slicker game that they’re struggling to play, or which doesn’t fit the child,” said David Lubliner, marketing manager at LeapFrog, in answer to that question.

I can see the argument for parents to buy a console with more of an educational focus (and less of a “please can I have another action figure, please please PLEASE!” toy-pestering culture), but I suspect LeapTV may be a harder sell for the Skylanders generation of children.

But the last challenge may be the most formidable: tablets. For the price of a LeapTV, parents can buy a decent Android tablet nowadays – Tesco’s Hudl was a hit with families last Christmas, for example – with a growing library of children’s apps and games.

That’s Android, which hasn’t historically been the first priority for many children’s app developers. On iPad, there are even more high-quality kids’ apps with an educational aspect, and you could easily pick up 10 or more of them for the price of a single LeapTV cartridge.

None of this means LeapFrog’s new console is doomed, but it illustrates how tough the competition is for any children’s console from devices already being used in families’ living rooms.

LeapTV’s success will depend on how well it’s marketed to parents; the quality of its catalogue (including how many more big brands it can sign up); and whether there really is a demand from parents for a new children’s device under their TVs.

• YouTube, apps and Minecraft: digital kids and children’s media