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Direct link to the first look video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU This looks really neat, if a bit

Direct link to the first look video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU This looks really neat, if a bit expensive. Despite owning a Switch, I can't see myself buying either kit. Maybe when more information becomes available I'll reconsider. Admittedly, I might not be in the target demographic. Although on the other hand, most Switch owners that I know are male adults. I like anything that gets kids to play around with building stuff. Even when you're just following instructions, you get a sense of accomplishment. I'm sure after building a couple of these cardboard toys some kids will start wanting to experiment with their own creations too. Although if my limited experiences with kids are anything to go by, you'll probably need to buy a couple cardboard replacements in order to survive prolonged contact with children. It's also a fairly innovative. I genuinely hadn't considered something like this as a possibility. Have other console developers done anything similar?

photojosh 9y ago
> most Switch owners that I know are male adults Early adopter issue? Availability heuristic? We got one in December, and I'm the one who plays it least. My two primary-school boys are enamoured with Zelda and the wife's hooked on Overcooked, and we all play Mario Kart together. Other families with children (peers to ours) are slowly buying them. Probably helped by the fact that we rave about ours and view it as a great family activity due to all the co-op games. Other families have expressed regret they got Xbox etc.
- bsimpson 9y ago
  My cousin is an elementary school girl who was very excited to get one for X-mas and plays it with her sister.
hrktb 9y ago
I was seeing this as directly in line with Google’s cardboard initiatives. I also think the main point is not to sell kits but to show the way to the very few people who’ll get a spark of genius and build something original. They also organize camps for parents to come wih their kids to build something, so I really think te goal is to stimulate creativity. For the ‘why cardboard’ part, I also think it’s to avoid that their labo stuff are seen as long term appliances or officially sanctionned peripherals.
bane 9y ago
It's not really that expensive if you break it down. The $69 variety kit is basically 5 toys and 5 different pieces of software. Put another way, would you pay $14 for one of these with the software? The Google Cardboard kits used to be $10-$15 and they were much simpler devices. The other one is $80 (okay a bit pricier), but it lets you "play" as the avatar instead of just waving around a wiimote (Nintendo seems to be a bit coy about weather you put the console itself in the headset to make it a VR experience, but whatever). I think this is Nintendo about to freaking nail it again, and this shows their DNA coming from toys again. People are talking about buying more than one Switch for a household just so the kids won't fight over the labo toys. That's something Sony and Microsoft (and even Google who sort of came up with this concept) can't even dream about. I'm really blown away by the Nintendo of the last couple years: NES Classic, SNES classic, Switch...their only execution problem at the moment seems to be getting enough hardware in stores, but it's almost like they accidentally dug up a joy vein deep in the Earth and are now selling the distilled and refined happiness to the market so we can all partake. This Nintendo "gets" it.
- notatoad 9y ago
  >Nintendo seems to be a bit coy about weather you put the console itself in the headset to make it a VR experience, but whatever Almost certainly not. vr on a 6" 720p screen would be an absolutely terrible experience.
  - sclangdon 9y ago
    Like when people said the 3DS couldn't pull off 3D without glasses...
    - Accacin 9y ago
      I mean it wasn't great and I'd always turn it off until I got the new 3DS with the eye tracking.. Now it's perfect and I very rarely turn it off.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      Yes, because almost no one had a glasses-free screens available at the time. But we have VR already,and low pixel count is a huge problem with it - 720p screen is going to be horrendous no matter what you do, it's been tested before and it's just not pretty.
sclangdon 9y ago
> Although if my limited experiences with kids are anything to go by, you'll probably need to buy a couple cardboard replacements in order to survive prolonged contact with children. Kids will break it no matter what it's made from. That's why I think cardboard is a great choice because it can be fixed easily, or even just replaced for free in most cases (old delivery boxes, or the selection of free boxes you get in supermarkets, etc). Not to mention kids can easily draw on cardboard, or paint it, etc.

photojosh 9y ago

> most Switch owners that I know are male adults Early adopter issue? Availability heuristic? We got one in December, and I'm the one who plays it least. My two primary-school boys are enamoured with Zelda and the wife's hooked on Overcooked, and we all play Mario Kart together. Other families with children (peers to ours) are slowly buying them. Probably helped by the fact that we rave about ours and view it as a great family activity due to all the co-op games. Other families have expressed regret they got Xbox etc.

bsimpson 9y ago
My cousin is an elementary school girl who was very excited to get one for X-mas and plays it with her sister.

hrktb 9y ago

I was seeing this as directly in line with Google’s cardboard initiatives. I also think the main point is not to sell kits but to show the way to the very few people who’ll get a spark of genius and build something original. They also organize camps for parents to come wih their kids to build something, so I really think te goal is to stimulate creativity. For the ‘why cardboard’ part, I also think it’s to avoid that their labo stuff are seen as long term appliances or officially sanctionned peripherals.

bane 9y ago

It's not really that expensive if you break it down. The $69 variety kit is basically 5 toys and 5 different pieces of software. Put another way, would you pay $14 for one of these with the software? The Google Cardboard kits used to be $10-$15 and they were much simpler devices. The other one is $80 (okay a bit pricier), but it lets you "play" as the avatar instead of just waving around a wiimote (Nintendo seems to be a bit coy about weather you put the console itself in the headset to make it a VR experience, but whatever). I think this is Nintendo about to freaking nail it again, and this shows their DNA coming from toys again. People are talking about buying more than one Switch for a household just so the kids won't fight over the labo toys. That's something Sony and Microsoft (and even Google who sort of came up with this concept) can't even dream about. I'm really blown away by the Nintendo of the last couple years: NES Classic, SNES classic, Switch...their only execution problem at the moment seems to be getting enough hardware in stores, but it's almost like they accidentally dug up a joy vein deep in the Earth and are now selling the distilled and refined happiness to the market so we can all partake. This Nintendo "gets" it.

notatoad 9y ago
>Nintendo seems to be a bit coy about weather you put the console itself in the headset to make it a VR experience, but whatever Almost certainly not. vr on a 6" 720p screen would be an absolutely terrible experience.
- sclangdon 9y ago
  Like when people said the 3DS couldn't pull off 3D without glasses...
  - Accacin 9y ago
    I mean it wasn't great and I'd always turn it off until I got the new 3DS with the eye tracking.. Now it's perfect and I very rarely turn it off.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    Yes, because almost no one had a glasses-free screens available at the time. But we have VR already,and low pixel count is a huge problem with it - 720p screen is going to be horrendous no matter what you do, it's been tested before and it's just not pretty.

sclangdon 9y ago

> Although if my limited experiences with kids are anything to go by, you'll probably need to buy a couple cardboard replacements in order to survive prolonged contact with children. Kids will break it no matter what it's made from. That's why I think cardboard is a great choice because it can be fixed easily, or even just replaced for free in most cases (old delivery boxes, or the selection of free boxes you get in supermarkets, etc). Not to mention kids can easily draw on cardboard, or paint it, etc.