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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.

>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.

Like when people said the 3DS couldn't pull off 3D without glasses...

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.

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.

Have you used a 720p VR headset? I have. I spent 400$ on one. It's unusable. It's out of the question. At 4x that resolution everything is a blurry, blocky, unreadable mess. 720p isn't even worth considering.

It's not really that important at toy level devices. Kids will put on and use just about anything so long as it provides some level of experience.

Until it makes them nauseous, which is a real problem with low-quality VR.

Not to mention that avoiding the trap of "let's just make it shitty, kids won't care" is kinda Nintendo's whole thing.

I'd say that their largest execution problem right now is their online offering.

It is really, really lacking now that some friends have got a Switch and we are trying to play some Splatoon together, it sucks to have to use Discord in my phone or computer while playing on the Switch just to have a proper voice chat.

I understand that Nintendo want to be as family-friendly as possible so removing the toxicity from voice chats is commendable but... Please, give me the option for that with my friends, I want a party system that works across games, in the system.

> 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.

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

> 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.

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.