Nintendo is soon to launch a range of build-it-yourself cardboard accessories for the Switch console, called Nintendo Labo. The Japanese company intends to widen the Nintendo Switch market within a single family, from the age of 6.
This new concept makes it possible to build different objects out of cardboard, known as Toy-Con. These Toy-Con are designed to hold the console’s main controllers, the Joy-Con, and/or the screen. These Switch accessories are built by following a tutorial with the plans for the accessories, shown on the console. Children (with or without adult help) assemble pre-cut sheets of cardboard and other parts (cords, stickers, cushions, string, straps, eyelets, elastic bands) without glue to make different objects. The player-makers can personalise and customise their creations with colourable stickers and/or strips of adhesive tape.
Nintendo Labo offers two kits: the Toy-Con 01 Multi-Kit and Toy-Con 02 Robot Kit. The first allows five building and playing experiences: a remote-controlled car, a fishing rod, a house, a motorbike and a piano. The second kit makes it possible to build a kind of central unit to which the player can attach their arms and legs with straps to imitate the movements of a “mecha” (giant robots).
This new gaming experience is thus meant to be collective, even intergenerational, bringing together children and parents, children and grandparents around concrete projects. Let us hope that this new “digital-cardboard” way of living together will not hide the fact that these are above all video games for children, to be used “at the right time and in the right conditions”.
CDB
Cécile Dolbeau-Bandin, ATER in section 71 at the University of Caen, is a researcher at CERReV