Nintendo Labo Is A Series Of Cardboard Peripherals For Your Switch

When people heard that Nintendo had another surprise announcement to make today, I don’t think anyone expected Nintendo Labo. This is essentially a range of DIY cardboard peripherals taking the Nintendo Switch and its Joy-Con and transforming them into all manner of things, from fishing rods and pianos to robot suits and motorbikes, and letting these interact with games.

It’s basically magic in cardboard form, as far as I’m concerned.

Magic doesn’t come cheap though, with the cardboard stencils priced at $69. Launching on 27th April, this range of “Toy-Con” – Nintendo have got their “punny” hat on today – will be shipped out to players in the form of modular sheets of cardboard that you then build at home following the instructions on the Switch. There will be two sets available to start with, the Variety Kit including an RC car, fishing rod, house, motorbike handle bars and piano, and the Robot Kit which is a wearable robot suit.

That magic is made possible by the features of the Switch and Joy-Con. The piano actually detects the keys moving using the infrared sensor on the right Joy-Con, while the RC car moves by channelling the sensitive HD Rumble of the Joy-Con through the cardboard. It’s simply ingenious.

All of this will be previewed at a Nintendo Labo Workshop event, where kids, parents, press and YouTubers will be able to go hands on and build some of this stuff. You can register your interest in the event here, which will run from 14th-16th February.

Finally, long term Nintendo fans may note that Nintendo Labo has replaced the Wii U tab on the Nintendo website. I’m sure some people will be shedding a tear for the disappearance of a hugely under-appreciated console.

Source: Nintendo

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I'm probably wearing toe shoes, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!

10 Comments

  1. Was thinking WTF? but then saw the release date and it all made sense…

    • 27th April? I’m not sure why Nintendo Labo has anything to do with Moldovan Flag Day…

  2. With a craft-y six year old son, I think this looks like hours and hours of fun.

    Although there are already papier-mache robots from Robot Wars littering our house, so I can only imagine what it’ll look like afterwards.

  3. And it’s not even April fools day.

    If Sony/MS had come out with this, they would have been ripped to shreds. But Nintendo… it’s revolutionary. I just don’t get it.

  4. What a genius concept. Nintendo do like their bizarre ideas.

    It sort of reminds me of that eye of judgement game for PS3 minus the cardboard.

  5. That’s brilliantly bonkers!

    • It totally is! And the semi-disposable nature will mean they probably sell more than one set to a lot of customers. I’m on board, looks great!

  6. Toy-Con? It certainly is a con going by the price. I thought at first these would be free stencils you could download and print yourself, but no, they want a ludicrous price for them. Cardboard ffs.

  7. A lot of “this product sucks because I’m not the demographic” moaning going on at the moment but, as a father of two young kids, I can see us picking this up. Both of them love crafts and building stuff so this looks ideal.
    It’s safe to assume the $70 price tag is largely because of the bundled in software. I’d imagine replacement parts will be a fraction of this cost.

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