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I didn’t expect to be spending today writing about a console, but here we are. The Nintendo Switch 2 is officially announced in a teasingly slow-to-start video, and hold up, did those Joy-Cons just start slipping and sliding around like the rodents we PC gamers are so used to?
Yes, I believe they did. In the teaser video, at approximately one minute and ten seconds in, a Joy-Con slips into its… attachment and starts skating around. This screams “mouse mode”, no?
A mouse mode for the Switch 2 wouldn’t be completely out of the blue, given there have been rumours for a while that the Joy-Cons might each be able to be used as a mouse thanks to a sensor on their inside, just like on the bottom of a mouse.
Who knows what such a feature could be used for? To browse around the operating system, sure—but that doesn’t seem like a massive necessity given the Nintendo Switch OS. There might be some games where mouse control would help, such as Civilization VI or level design modes such as Super Mario Maker.
Apart from that, though, I’d bet Nintendo has some uses up its sleeve that we couldn’t guess at, which is an exciting thought.
Assuming the slip-n-slide functionality demonstrated in the video is, indeed, mouse functionality, we’ll also have one more mark in the “inspired by handheld gaming PCs” column that I mischievously alluded to earlier today. That’s because the Lenovo Legion Go already has this functionality.
And regarding this, despite initially thinking I’d make much use of it and still thinking it’s kind of neat, I must admit that I find the Legion Go controller’s ‘FPS mode’ (i.e. mouse mode) to be a tad gimmicky and unnecessary.
I use the Legion Go quite regularly and there’s a lot about it that I love, but I can’t remember the last time I snapped off its right-side controller to use as a mouse. The touchscreen or trackpad serves my needs well enough in almost all cases, and I’m not playing competitive shooters on my handheld anyway.
And speaking of trackpads, there’s been a lot of wonder over the enigmatic blank “button” on the right Switch 2 Joy-Con. But—hear me out—doesn’t that look a little like a trackpad nub, the likes of which you see on the new Lenovo Legion Go S? If that’s what that “button” is, then I hold even firmer to my “inspired by handheld PC” line.
We’ll have to see how all these features actually pan out, of course. I can’t help but wonder how stable a Joy-Con would feel to use in mouse mode, underside attachment or not.
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Kurt Indovina
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