| Soundwave said: An interesting thing is Nintendo around the end of 2022 patented a full VR setup with a 2nd player using a smartphone or TV to play as well.
Nintendo has made other VR patents in the past, but I think they largely related to Switch 1 Labo VR. This seems like something way beyond that. Does it bring something new to the game experience? Definitely. Once people try like Mario Kart or Metroid Prime 4 or Pilotwings in VR, it's clearly an experience that is different from just playing on a TV. It's something Nintendo has done a test run with in terms of Labo VR, really even starting with past projects like the Virtual Boy and Wii are kind of trying to be virtual reality in some respect. So in that sense it is a evolution of things Nintendo has been working on for a long time. Lower end VR is still a relatively open space still too. Yes there is the Meta Quest headsets, but they don't really have a killer software ecosystem like Nintendo can leverage (Nintendo could quickly get ports of the same VR titles they have but then also have the massive killer app of their own product catalog ... like Mario Kart, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, even lower end Nintendo IP like Pilotwings or F-Zero or Wave Race could really shine in VR) and a Meta Quest can't function as a Switch, whereas in this hypothetical setup a Switch 2 can do all the things of a Switch + Meta Quest as well. Meta is not a game company really, they don't have in-house slate of IP even comparable to Microsoft or Sony, let alone Nintendo, so big advantage for Nintendo there. Things like Sony PS5 VR2 are way too expensive, Nintendo probably has an opportunity to move in on the lower end of the market and get a lot more people to experience VR at a more affordable price, and it doesn't have to be the be-all/end-all for the system, it can be one of those things Nintendo recommends you use once in a while for shorter play bursts. I think *affordable* VR makes a lot of sense and checks a bunch of boxes for Nintendo. The other thing with this patent is maybe Nintendo is looking at Switch 2 being able to stream to other tablet/phone displays, imagine for example playing a game on the Switch 2, but letting a friend play the game using their smartphone as a screen and just passing them a Joycon to play. |
That's a really cool idea. It's very much an evolution on the Wii U concept, at least how it was done in games like Nintendo Land. VR takes you into your own little world, but this way people can kind of pop into your little world and mess with it. It also has the advantage of completely blinding the VR player to what others are doing. This was something they tried to take advantage of in Game and Wario, but it didn't quite work.
It would be a very Nintendo like thing to take an idea that had been done in the past and kind of refine it. That's kind of what they did with the Wii U in the first place, which was kind of an evolution of the GBA/Gamecube Link cable. And, I think in this way, it's a lot clearer of a proposition to consumers. The VR headset over one player's head clearly sends the message that person is doing something different from everyone else. I could see the Smartphone add on being useful for some Jackbox party-like games. And it could also just serve as a regular VR headset as well.
It's just a patent, so who knows if it will ever get made, and who knows if it would actually work in practice. Hard to say without seeing some kind of software. But I'm glad Nintendo is at least considering things like this. We hopefully haven't come to the end of innovation in gaming hardware.
