Rumor: Nintendo Switch VR Announcement Arriving This Year

Posted by jvh | Feb 18, 2019 | Entertainment, Virtual Reality, XR Trends | 0

Rumor: Nintendo Switch VR Announcement Arriving This Year

UPDATE – March 07th, 2019: Nintendo Labo VR Coming to Switch

According to Nintendo World Report, multiple unnamed sources have revealed that gaming industry veteran Nintendo is going to make virtual reality-related announcements later this year. This rumor seems likely when taking into account that a screen-splitting VR mode was discovered by fans in the Switch’s system firmware, and that Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime confirmed that the company was researching VR gaming possibilities with the Switch.

“[VR] is tech that we’re looking at, but in the end it has to be fun,” said Fils-Aime in at Q&A at the Geekwire Summit in October 2018. “That’s our mission, and that is what we do arguably better than anyone else…there are new experiences we want to bring to life.”

Nintendo’s exploration of extended realities is nothing new. In 1995, the Kyoto-based company released the Virtual Boy, a failed attempt at stereoscopic 3D graphics displayed in a head-mounted display (HMD), and in 2011, the company provided augmented reality (AR) support for their portable 3DS handheld gaming system, though with limited support.

However, with the 32.27 million Switch units in customers’ hands and Nintendo’s support of innovative use of the Switch with their Labo line of products, the house that Mario and hanafuda built could provide the first substantive steps for uninitiated consumers to familiarize themselves with VR with tech they already own and enjoy.

Source

Could A VR-Related Switch Announcement Be Approaching? – Nintendo World Report

Thumbnail source: Nintendo.

About The Author

jvh

Joseph Van Harken -- is an award-winning journalist, producer and showrunner who operates and innovates on the edge of the supply and demand of storytelling. From war zones to war rooms, Joseph is adept at creating, sharing and consuming stories of consequence across television, digital media, and eLearning publishing platforms. He started his career as a print reporter and photojournalist for The Mackinac Island Town Crier, a small weekly rag in a timeless Michigan tourist town. His affinity for moving pictures soon pulled him toward television and he moved to work at the ABC affiliate in El Paso, TX where he developed an online backend CMS and partnered with Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com to establish KVIA as one of the first news stations porting news content to the web. Joseph then moved to New York City during the Dot Com boom where he was a founding member of World Now, a local TV internet platform. From there he joined CNN.com and CNN as a one-man-band, multimedia political beat reporter. Joseph then broke off and became an independent, international multimedia reporter and producer and covering stories all over the globe from Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, Costa Rica, Okinawa, New Orleans and New York creating television and web content for National Geographic, Travel Channel, MTV News, History, A&E, SyFy, Animal Planet, Discovery Health, and Vogue Magazine. During a multi-year stint with MTV, he shot/produced for TRUE LIFE, DIARY, MADE, DP’d the pilot for 8th & OCEAN, developed, Co-EP'd and DP’d THE PAPER, created, developed, EP'd and DP’d MY LIFE AS LIZ season 1 & 2 and recently Co-EP’d the History Channel series DARK HORSE NATION produced by Warrior Poets. Realizing that storytelling is essentially a form of teaching, he launched th3rd coast Entertainment & Training to satiate the eLearning industry's dire need for quality, engaging content. Joseph holds a BA in Communications from the University of Michigan and an MS from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he was named the Society of Professional Journalists Student of the Year and won the John M Patterson Documentary Television award.

Recent Posts

Powered by