Nintendo has finally revealed Nintendo Switch 2, a successor to its wildly popular Switch. The new console has a few significant changes, including a mysterious square-shaped button and a second USB-C port. It’s bigger. It’s almost entirely black (very Microsoft-y of Nintendo to do this, by the way). But the weirdest part of the reveal video, in my opinion, is the implication that the Joy-Cons can be used as a mouse.
This was already rumored, and if I hadn’t seen those rumors, then I might not have understood what I was looking at during the portion of the teaser that depicts the Joy-Cons sliding around on a hard surface like a cute lil’ mouse. Because of those rumors, though, I’m now convinced that this is a thing and the Switch 2 will include this feature. The video specifically shows the Joy-Con mouse position as perpendicular to the surface its on. The new Joy-Con mechanic is further cemented by the part of the video that shows a Joy-Con on its side with a section that really looks like an optical mouse light. That can be seen in the screenshot below.
Perhaps more importantly, the video shows the Joy-Con clicking onto a separate piece before going into mouse mode. This other piece looks like it has some small pads on the bottom, like a computer mouse would, to make it a little easier to slide around.
My biggest question is… why? I’ve now picked up my old Joy-Cons and slid them around my desk just to get a feel for how this would be, and it feels weird as heck. They’re small and fiddly. The new Joy-Cons will be bigger and may feel a bit more robust, but this is still a very skinny and flat mouse that doesn’t look like it would conform to a human hand particularly well. It would probably hurt my hand if I used this “mouse” for a prolonged length of time.
That matters, because most games that benefit from using a mouse are games that involves a lot of mouse usage. I’m thinking about strategy games here, with lots of menu items on the screen to click on, or units to select and direct to different places on a map. Or maybe point-and-click adventure games that require carefully sliding a cursor around a room, looking for clues. These are games that are technically doable with a controller — I’ve been playing Rise of the Golden Idol on both PC and Steam Deck, for example — but they’re better with a mouse. And it’s hard to even imagine playing a really serious strategy game like StarCraft 2 using a Joy-Con. This idea can only go so far.
But this is Nintendo, and Nintendo consoles almost always have a gimmick. The gimmick isn’t always good. Although there were a couple of games that made excellent use of the Wii’s motion controls, I can think of plenty more that were deeply un-fun. Then again, the Wii U’s gimmick — its tablet — paced the way to the first Nintendo Switch, the super-adaptable console we all know and love. So you really never know.
I’ll have to see what I think of this when I have the new Joy-Con in my hand and I’m (apparently) sliding it around on a hard surface while playing a game on a Nintendo Switch 2. After all, Nintendo has gotten me to do a lot of things that I once would have considered strange, such as swinging a Wiimote like it’s a bowling ball, or holding a Joy-Con in my fist and punching the air. Maybe holding a Joy-Con like a mouse will be something that I someday consider normal, or even fun, for very specific games. Or maybe Nintendo will release a pro controller version of a mouse that’s more mouse-shaped. All I know is, this is the most PC gaming-esque that a Nintendo console has ever looked, from the all-black design to the mouse, and that’s definitely going to take some getting used to.
