Back in January, I lamented the idea that the Switch 2 would simply be an upgraded Switch. Not because I wouldnāt buy oneāIād be there day one regardlessābut because what Iāve loved about Nintendo for so many decades is the companyās desire to just be strange. From the clamshell two-screen bizarreness of the DS to the out-of-nowhere stick-waving delight of the Wii, you could count on Nintendo to make things a bit odd. It didnāt look like that was happening at all this year…until the reveal of the camera.
OK, obviously cameras are not a new innovation in console gaming, and Nintendo themselves have experimented with them before with the DSi and various other devices. But the moment the Switch 2 Directās video started showing how it intended to use a camera, everything started getting that notorious Ninty weirdness. I smiled big.
It occurred during the reveal of what the new C button would be for, letting you create party chats while playing games and even share live gameplay among friends. The Direct reveals how you can natter away and share multiplayer gaming, and then, out of nowhere, drops in the existence of the Switch 2 Camera.
The footage shows some neat tech, albeit running extremely choppily. (I kind of love that Nintendo is delivering no bullshit here, just saying āYeah, itās janky, and thatās cool.ā) Despite the cameras being placed a good distance from the people playing, it seems to be able to find their faces, and then cut them out from the backgrounds and project them over their streamed game footage. Sure, thatās normal on Twitch or what have you, but this is built right into the system! It also has a bunch of modes, letting you just see each otherās video feeds instead, and it all looks nice. But then…heads in bubbles!
The moment the footage switched to Mario Party Jamboree, it was a whole other thing. Peopleās faces, live, in bubbles next to their characters. Reaction cams, right in the game! Thatās just daft, and great.
But the tech seems even smarter than that. According to the Direct, with one camera and four people in a room, it can detect everyoneās faces, and put each of them into a bubble on the gameās screen. Here they even emphasize the possibility of seeing your friendsā reactions, even when youāre all looking at the screen, with highlighted moments encouraging people to pull faces and goof around. (Itās not clear how the tech will match the face to the player, and whether it will require some pre-game Joy-Con matching.) But the moment I knew I was writing this article was when I saw all four players pop out of Mario pipes which singing and dancing with Bowser.
Come on! Thatās awesome! Thatās so splendidly dumb! What a silly, lovely thing to have figured out. And then theyāre all punching blocks above their heads, suggesting this camera is also packing some Wii/Kinect abilities, without the need for the sensor bar.
Yes, itās a gimmick. Iām not saying itās anything other than a gimmick! But itās the sort of daftness I was hoping for, offering imaginative developers the ability to do even sillier things.
Iām not expecting the lunatic joy of the first few months of the Nintendo DS, but Iām really hoping for some fun party games, some novel indies, and for Nintendo to find a way to include the new abilities in the strangest ways.
Also, I love that the camera has the look of an olde worlde telephone.
