Why Nintendo Hasn’t Made a Real VR Headset Yet

There’s a rumor going around that Nintendo is making a VR headset in partnership with Google. The rumor is still unconfirmed, but when the world’s oldest extant gaming company finally thinks it’s time to make a dedicated XR device, you know it’s going to be something special. Having seen how far the technology has come though, it raises a question: why hasn’t Nintendo made a VR headset yet?

Nintendo basically has a singular MO, and it does it well: create broadly accessible hardware to serve as a vehicle for its exclusive swath of family friendly games. Ok, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a good starting point to understand why Nintendo hasn’t made a proper VR headset yet, and probably won’t for some time yet to come.

Wait. Didn’t Nintendo have that Virtual Boy thing in the ’90s? And what about Labo VR for Switch? Those were VR headsets, right? Yes, and no. Or rather, no and kind of (in that order). I’ll get to those in a bit.

In short, the reason Nintendo hasn’t made a real VR platform like Meta Quest has a lot to do with risk aversion, since the company generally prefers to wait until technologies are more mature and have proven market potential. Over the years, Nintendo has also become increasingly reliant on big singular projects which, while not always exactly cutting-edge, have allowed it to comfortably exist outside of the PlayStation and Xbox binary.

Lateral Thinking with ‘Withered’ Technology

Much of Nintendo’s market strategy can be attributed to Gunpei Yokoi, the prolific Nintendo designer best known for pioneering the company’s handheld segment. Yokoi is credited with designing Nintendo’s first handheld, Game & Watch, which at its 1980 launch made use of the cheap and abundant liquid crystal displays and 4-bit microcontrollers initially conceived for calculators. Among many other accomplishments, Yokoi is credited with designing Gameboy, creating the D-pad, and producing both Metroid and Kid Icarus. His last project before leaving the company in 1996: Virtual Boy. More on that later.

Yokoi’s career at Nintendo spanned 31 years, covering its transformation from the then nearly century-old Japanese playing card company to worldwide video gaming powerhouse. His philosophy, mentioned in his Japan-only book ‘Gunpei Yokoi Game Hall’ (横井軍平ゲーム館), sums up the sort of thinking that vaulted Nintendo to the world stage; Yokoi coined the phrase “lateral thinking with withered technology,” outlining the company’s strategy of using mature technology which is both cheap and well understood, and then finding novel and fun ways of applying it to games. That’s basically been the case from Game & Watch all the way to Switch and Switch Lite.

And it’s not just handhelds though. Nintendo consoles don’t tend to focus on cutting-edge specs either (as any former Wii owners can attest). For Nintendo console owners across the years, it’s more about being able to play games from a host of recognizable franchises such as Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokémon, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing. Since the success of Wii, it’s also been about creating new types of games centered around novel input schemes, like how the Wiimote lets you bowl in Wii Sports, or how Joy-Cons let you grove on-the-go in Just Dance. In short, Nintendo is really good at serving people with what they’re already used to and baking in novelty that owners can engage with or equally ignore.

Virtual Boy Failure, Labo VR Experiment

When Nintendo sticks to its principles, we usually get a DS, Switch, Gameboy, Wii, Game Boy Advance, 3DS, NES, SNES, Game & Watch, Nintendo 64—10 of the top 20 bestselling video game platforms in history. When they don’t, we get Virtual Boy.

Accounts hold that Yokoi was rushed to finish up work on Virtual Boy so the company could focus on the launch of Nintendo 64, which is partially why it failed. Timed right at the peak of the ’90s craze, Nintendo released what essentially was no more than a 3D version of Gameboy—a 32-bit tabletop standalone console that just so happened to have stereoscopic displays, making it no more a VR headset than Nintendo 3DS. Besides relying on some objectively useless stereoscopy, being shaped like a headset, and having ‘Virtual’ in the name, that’s where the comparisons between it and virtual reality stop.

Image courtesy Evan-Amos, Wiki Commons

Note: Every time someone refers to Virtual Boy as a VR headset, or pretends to wear it in a YouTube thumbnail, I scream into an empty paint bucket, hoping the residual fumes will calm my nerves.

There was no head tracking, motion controllers, or even games that wouldn’t have played equally as well on a standard Gameboy. Moreover, its red monochrome displays were criticized for giving players eye strain, nausea, and headaches during gameplay. Its awkward tabletop stand also didn’t articulate enough to adjust to each user’s height, making users strain their necks to play. The nail in the coffin: it was priced at $180 at launch in 1995, just $20 less than Nintendo 64 which arrived one year later and promised to deliver true 3D graphics (something which Virtual Boy couldn’t do, despite supporting stereoscopy!).

Still, I don’t think Nintendo tied Virtual Boy’s failure to the larger failure of VR at the time, but rather recognized what happens when it innovates in the wrong direction and abandons its core principles. Nintendo’s successive handhelds focused on keeping the pocketable form-factor, and typically offered a generation or two of backwards compatibility so consumers could easily upgrade. Gameboys to follow were truly portable, and offered all of the games you wanted to play on the bus, train, plane, wherever.

But what about Nintendo Labo VR for Switch? Well, it was a pretty awesome experiment when it was first released in 2019. The DIY accessory pack made of cardboard actually got Nintendo involved in VR for the first time, and it did it with the same family friendly flair the company seems to bring to everything it does.

Image courtesy Nintendo

It’s a fun little kit that uses Joy-Cons in some unique ways, but with only a few high-quality native VR ‘taster’ experiences to play with, it’s basically a one-and-done deal that Nintendo critically hasn’t iterated on beyond its initial release despite a generally good reception from its target market.

Granted, Nintendo did provide Labo VR support for a number of first-party titles, including Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but this just provides basic 3D viewer support, and doesn’t convert these games into any sort of full VR experience.

To boot, Labo VR actually has Unity support, meaning third-party developers can create games and experiences for it; the fact is the headset and slot-in Switch form-factor just isn’t built for long-term play like a standalone or PC VR headset though. It’s front-heavy, doesn’t have a strap, and just isn’t the basis of a modern VR platform. It’s a toy more than a platform.

Switching It Up with One Big Platform

The big question is: when? When will Nintendo feel like VR is mature enough to enter in full force with something like a standalone headset, replete with a host of beloved Nintendo franchise games? If past performance predicts future outcomes, it’s pretty unlikely we’ll be seeing such a device in the near term.

The company has spent the better part of the last decade recovering from the failure of Wii U, the company’s least successful video game console to date (next to Virtual Boy). Going headfirst into the XR niche soon with a dedicated hardware release doesn’t seem plausible given how focused the company has become on melding both handheld and console product development with Switch.

Fun Labo VR adds-on aside, Nintendo has expressed some skepticism of VR in the past. Speaking to TIME, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto said in 2014 that VR just wasn’t the sort of broadly accessible player experience the company was trying to crack with Wii U:

“When you think about what virtual reality is, which is one person putting on some goggles and playing by themselves kind of over in a corner, or maybe they go into a separate room and they spend all their time alone playing in that virtual reality, that’s in direct contrast with what it is we’re trying to achieve with Wii U. And so I have a little bit of uneasiness with whether or not that’s the best way for people to play.”

Granted, the technology has changed a great deal since 2014, the same year Oculus Rift DK2 came out. With mixed reality passthrough becoming a standard on standalone headsets such as Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, Nintendo would be crazy not keep tabs on the technology, albeit with same hesitation it has mostly shown in the past with its adoption of cutting-edge technology.

Nintendo VR patent | Image courtesy USPTO, via Levelup

In fact, the company is actively creating patents around mixed reality systems that focus on cooperative gameplay using players both in and out of a headset. Above is one such patent from 2022 showing a multiplayer game based on some sort of proposed tabletop platformer.

Unlike a lot of the tech companies out there trying to spin up multiple products and maintain large, interconnected platforms, Nintendo’s main MO is to gamble on one big thing that will probably come with additional functions and a few input quirks. Whether that’s some sort of additional headset peripheral or not… you never know. In the end, the more inclusive nature of mixed reality may change some minds over at Nintendo, although you can bet whatever comes next from the Japanese gaming company will be another experiment, or similar add-on that uses mature hardware in a new and different way.

– – — – –

What is certain is Nintendo isn’t in any rush, as both hardware and software sales of traditional games still far outweigh VR games. Still, you can’t help but wonder what a Nintendo headset might look like, and what a full-throated XR release from Nintendo would do for generations of kids (and adults) to come.

Why Nintendo Hasn’t Made a Real VR Headset Yet

There’s a rumor going around that Nintendo is making a VR headset in partnership with Google. The rumor is still unconfirmed, but when the world’s oldest extant gaming company finally thinks it’s time to make a dedicated XR device, you know it’s going to be something special. Having seen how far the technology has come though, it raises a question: why hasn’t Nintendo made a VR headset yet?

Nintendo basically has a singular MO, and it does it well: create broadly accessible hardware to serve as a vehicle for its exclusive swath of family friendly games. Ok, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a good starting point to understand why Nintendo hasn’t made a proper VR headset yet, and probably won’t for some time yet to come.

Wait. Didn’t Nintendo have that Virtual Boy thing in the ’90s? And what about Labo VR for Switch? Those were VR headsets, right? Yes, and no. Or rather, no and kind of (in that order). I’ll get to those in a bit.

In short, the reason Nintendo hasn’t made a real VR platform like Meta Quest has a lot to do with risk aversion, since the company generally prefers to wait until technologies are more mature and have proven market potential. Over the years, Nintendo has also become increasingly reliant on big singular projects which, while not always exactly cutting-edge, have allowed it to comfortably exist outside of the PlayStation and Xbox binary.

Lateral Thinking with ‘Withered’ Technology

Much of Nintendo’s market strategy can be attributed to Gunpei Yokoi, the prolific Nintendo designer best known for pioneering the company’s handheld segment. Yokoi is credited with designing Nintendo’s first handheld, Game & Watch, which at its 1980 launch made use of the cheap and abundant liquid crystal displays and 4-bit microcontrollers initially conceived for calculators. Among many other accomplishments, Yokoi is credited with designing Gameboy, creating the D-pad, and producing both Metroid and Kid Icarus. His last project before leaving the company in 1996: Virtual Boy. More on that later.

Yokoi’s career at Nintendo spanned 31 years, covering its transformation from the then nearly century-old Japanese playing card company to worldwide video gaming powerhouse. His philosophy, mentioned in his Japan-only book ‘Gunpei Yokoi Game Hall’ (横井軍平ゲーム館), sums up the sort of thinking that vaulted Nintendo to the world stage; Yokoi coined the phrase “lateral thinking with withered technology,” outlining the company’s strategy of using mature technology which is both cheap and well understood, and then finding novel and fun ways of applying it to games. That’s basically been the case from Game & Watch all the way to Switch and Switch Lite.

And it’s not just handhelds though. Nintendo consoles don’t tend to focus on cutting-edge specs either (as any former Wii owners can attest). For Nintendo console owners across the years, it’s more about being able to play games from a host of recognizable franchises such as Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokémon, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing. Since the success of Wii, it’s also been about creating new types of games centered around novel input schemes, like how the Wiimote lets you bowl in Wii Sports, or how Joy-Cons let you grove on-the-go in Just Dance. In short, Nintendo is really good at serving people with what they’re already used to and baking in novelty that owners can engage with or equally ignore.

Virtual Boy Failure, Labo VR Experiment

When Nintendo sticks to its principles, we usually get a DS, Switch, Gameboy, Wii, Game Boy Advance, 3DS, NES, SNES, Game & Watch, Nintendo 64—10 of the top 20 bestselling video game platforms in history. When they don’t, we get Virtual Boy.

Accounts hold that Yokoi was rushed to finish up work on Virtual Boy so the company could focus on the launch of Nintendo 64, which is partially why it failed. Timed right at the peak of the ’90s craze, Nintendo released what essentially was no more than a 3D version of Gameboy—a 32-bit tabletop standalone console that just so happened to have stereoscopic displays, making it no more a VR headset than Nintendo 3DS. Besides relying on some objectively useless stereoscopy, being shaped like a headset, and having ‘Virtual’ in the name, that’s where the comparisons between it and virtual reality stop.

Image courtesy Evan-Amos, Wiki Commons

Note: Every time someone refers to Virtual Boy as a VR headset, or pretends to wear it in a YouTube thumbnail, I scream into an empty paint bucket, hoping the residual fumes will calm my nerves.

There was no head tracking, motion controllers, or even games that wouldn’t have played equally as well on a standard Gameboy. Moreover, its red monochrome displays were criticized for giving players eye strain, nausea, and headaches during gameplay. Its awkward tabletop stand also didn’t articulate enough to adjust to each user’s height, making users strain their necks to play. The nail in the coffin: it was priced at $180 at launch in 1995, just $20 less than Nintendo 64 which arrived one year later and promised to deliver true 3D graphics (something which Virtual Boy couldn’t do, despite supporting stereoscopy!).

Still, I don’t think Nintendo tied Virtual Boy’s failure to the larger failure of VR at the time, but rather recognized what happens when it innovates in the wrong direction and abandons its core principles. Nintendo’s successive handhelds focused on keeping the pocketable form-factor, and typically offered a generation or two of backwards compatibility so consumers could easily upgrade. Gameboys to follow were truly portable, and offered all of the games you wanted to play on the bus, train, plane, wherever.

But what about Nintendo Labo VR for Switch? Well, it was a pretty awesome experiment when it was first released in 2019. The DIY accessory pack made of cardboard actually got Nintendo involved in VR for the first time, and it did it with the same family friendly flair the company seems to bring to everything it does.

Image courtesy Nintendo

It’s a fun little kit that uses Joy-Cons in some unique ways, but with only a few high-quality native VR ‘taster’ experiences to play with, it’s basically a one-and-done deal that Nintendo critically hasn’t iterated on beyond its initial release despite a generally good reception from its target market.

Granted, Nintendo did provide Labo VR support for a number of first-party titles, including Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but this just provides basic 3D viewer support, and doesn’t convert these games into any sort of full VR experience.

To boot, Labo VR actually has Unity support, meaning third-party developers can create games and experiences for it; the fact is the headset and slot-in Switch form-factor just isn’t built for long-term play like a standalone or PC VR headset though. It’s front-heavy, doesn’t have a strap, and just isn’t the basis of a modern VR platform. It’s a toy more than a platform.

Switching It Up with One Big Platform

The big question is: when? When will Nintendo feel like VR is mature enough to enter in full force with something like a standalone headset, replete with a host of beloved Nintendo franchise games? If past performance predicts future outcomes, it’s pretty unlikely we’ll be seeing such a device in the near term.

The company has spent the better part of the last decade recovering from the failure of Wii U, the company’s least successful video game console to date (next to Virtual Boy). Going headfirst into the XR niche soon with a dedicated hardware release doesn’t seem plausible given how focused the company has become on melding both handheld and console product development with Switch.

Fun Labo VR adds-on aside, Nintendo has expressed some skepticism of VR in the past. Speaking to TIME, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto said in 2014 that VR just wasn’t the sort of broadly accessible player experience the company was trying to crack with Wii U:

“When you think about what virtual reality is, which is one person putting on some goggles and playing by themselves kind of over in a corner, or maybe they go into a separate room and they spend all their time alone playing in that virtual reality, that’s in direct contrast with what it is we’re trying to achieve with Wii U. And so I have a little bit of uneasiness with whether or not that’s the best way for people to play.”

Granted, the technology has changed a great deal since 2014, the same year Oculus Rift DK2 came out. With mixed reality passthrough becoming a standard on standalone headsets such as Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, Nintendo would be crazy not keep tabs on the technology, albeit with same hesitation it has mostly shown in the past with its adoption of cutting-edge technology.

Nintendo VR patent | Image courtesy USPTO, via Levelup

In fact, the company is actively creating patents around mixed reality systems that focus on cooperative gameplay using players both in and out of a headset. Above is one such patent from 2022 showing a multiplayer game based on some sort of proposed tabletop platformer.

Unlike a lot of the tech companies out there trying to spin up multiple products and maintain large, interconnected platforms, Nintendo’s main MO is to gamble on one big thing that will probably come with additional functions and a few input quirks. Whether that’s some sort of additional headset peripheral or not… you never know. In the end, the more inclusive nature of mixed reality may change some minds over at Nintendo, although you can bet whatever comes next from the Japanese gaming company will be another experiment, or similar add-on that uses mature hardware in a new and different way.

– – — – –

What is certain is Nintendo isn’t in any rush, as both hardware and software sales of traditional games still far outweigh VR games. Still, you can’t help but wonder what a Nintendo headset might look like, and what a full-throated XR release from Nintendo would do for generations of kids (and adults) to come.

Proof Of Concept Video Shows Glorious Breath Of The Wild VR Mod

A proof of concept video showcases a new in-development mod that transforms The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild into a first-person VR game.

Don’t get too excited though – according to developers in the associated Discord server, it might take “a few months, maybe half a year or more” for any kind of playable public release.

That being said, the footage in the video above looks stunning already. Breath of the Wild has a beautiful cel-shaded art style, which lends itself really well to being upscaled and displayed at resolutions above its original intention, such as in this VR mod. The video shows both first and third person gameplay — in the latter, Link’s character model has been modded out and replaced with Zelda, but it’s an aesthetic change only.

Breath of the Wild released in 2017 for Wii U and Nintendo Switch, but this mod will be a PC VR mod that uses a popular Wii U emulator called Cemu. The developers are actively developing the mod now, and in the Discord server they said they expect the end product would use an alternate eye rendering method for VR, similar to the popular Grand Theft Auto V PC VRmod.

Many users in the Discord server have also noted that the hardware requirements for the mod, whenever it releases, will likely be quite high. Given that Cemu itself is an emulator, it can already be quite taxing depending on the capabilities of your PC. Adding VR support on top of that will require significant headroom, especially if you want to run it at a 4K resolution with a high framerate for VR.

Breath of the Wild does actually have native VR support, if you could call it that, with Nintendo’s Labo VR system on the Switch. That being said, Labo is a cardboard headset and when combined with the 720p screen resolution of the Switch, it’s not anything special — especially compared to this breathtaking proof-of-concept VR video. Back in 2019, Jamie dubbed it “Blur of the Wild” and said playing the game on Labo VR would be “a crime to the good people of Hyrule.”

Would you play this Breath of the Wild VR mod? Let us know in the comments below.

Nintendo’s Labo VR Blaster Starter Kit Now Only $20 For Limited Time

Nintendo’s Labo VR kit for Switch was one of the hottest items this time last year. Now online retailers Amazon and Best Buy have slashed the price of the smaller starter kit + Labo VR Blaster in half to just $20.

The starter kit includes the Nintendo Labo software, VR Goggles (Nintendo Switch not included), and the make-it-yourself VR Blaster. All required materials are included, and the packed-in software provides interactive build instructions, quick-play VR games and more.

Of course, you can go for the full six-toy kit, although it typically sells at the retail price of $250, making the Starter Kit + Blaster a great entry point if you’re curious and bored, but don’t want to break the bank.

Image courtesy Nintendo

Following Nintendo’s line of DIY augmentations to the Switch and JoyCon controllers, the VR version surprisingly brought a lot to the table in terms of replayabilty. When it released last year, Nintendo called it their “most immersive, robust Nintendo Labo kit to date,” as it not only included a number of fun accessories, but also 64 mini-experiences in the ‘VR Plaza’.

The Best Buy listing is a ‘Deal of the Day’, so it may only last 24 hours. Amazon seems to have price-matched Best Buy, although those listings typically hang around a little longer.

The post Nintendo’s Labo VR Blaster Starter Kit Now Only $20 For Limited Time appeared first on Road to VR.

Every Nintendo Switch VR Game Ranked And Scored

I’ll be honest, I’m still pretty fond of Nintendo Labo VR.

Look, I know that on a fundamentally technological scale, the thing is the pits. The screen is blurry, the tracking is primitive and the input is shoddy at best. But spending three hours arguing with my partner as we painstakingly folded cardboard and then refolded and refolded again (just to be sure) was some of the most enjoyable collaborative tomfoolery I’ve had in gaming. It didn’t really matter that the end experience was a bit, well, low-rate.

So, yes, I still put on the bird thing every once in a while and fly across the sunny shores. I might even build the friggin’ blaster one day. But since launch Labo VR’s library has grown in some surprising ways. Many of Nintendo’s biggest games have added support for the kit in one way or another. They’ve never been robust enough to warrant their own reviews, so we thought it best to compile our verdicts on each in one handy spot. We’ve ranked them from best to worst with scores, too. If you’re thinking of picking up Switch VR for yourself, best take a look here first.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker – Hidden Gems?

Captain Toad VR

Of every game that’s endeavored to support Labo VR since launch, Captain Toad’s efforts are perhaps the least offensive. In this twee adventure game you navigate tiny courses, avoiding dangers and solving puzzles. The little diorama-sized levels look quite adorable inside the headset and the smooth, simplistic art style helps ease the sting of the 720p display. It’s mostly comfortable to play, though rotating the stages can be a little disorientating. Still, there’s very little of it (four levels that each last about four minutes at most) and the experience would be much better with positional tracking. But it’s as agreeable as Switch VR gets and gives us hope Nintendo might take a more serious stab at the tech one day.

Score: 6/10

Nintendo Labo VR Kit – Wonky Fun

The pack-in software that comes with Labo VR itself is a mixed bag with a few key highlights. Not only does it include a faultless step-by-step guide to building each Labo kit, it contains a bunch of minigames to play with them after. Some of these, like a bird-flying game that reminds me of Pilotwings, are utterly mad (you hold a bird’s butt to your face) but a novel bit of fun. Many of them, though, are painfully dull or frustrating. Some third-person platform levels don’t really highlight the joys of VR, whilst games that utilize the Joy-Con’s motion controls are incredibly difficult to handle. Trying to throw a boomerang within one game is so infuriating I was tempted to lob my Joy-Con knowing full well it wouldn’t return.

Still, the kit’s best games are decent enough to warrant a look and the welcome spurring of build-it-yourself mentality makes it unlike anything else in VR. If you have kids you want to share VR with in particular, this isn’t the worst place to start.

Score: 5/10

Super Mario Odyssey – Astro Not

It’s not often you’ll see Nintendo aping Sony rather than the other way round. But the handful of VR levels on offer in Super Mario Odyssey do carry a small spark of Astro Bot-infused delight. You scutter around three environments from the main game in 360 degrees, completing a small number of challenges. It’s quite warming to see Mario scarper about in VR, especially when he climbs up close to the camera and shoots his lovably naive smile. He probably thinks you’re gasping at the sight of his masculine, plump figure brought to life in VR, but really you’re just relieved to see a friendly face between the sea of pixels. The further you venture away from the camera, the closer Mario resembles his 8-bit origins, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. It’s often hard to work out what’s going on and, just as you grasp it, the level ends. Mario deserves his own full VR game to rival Astro Bot, but this isn’t it.

Score: 4/10

Super Smash Bros Ultimate – Wasted Potential

Super Smash Bros Ultimate VR

Super Smash Bros Ultimate brings Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and many, many more storied gaming franchises to VR. If you want a Metroid VR game, this is the closest you’ll get without an emulator. Sadly this is a very poor VR debut for Pikachu, Snake and Cloud; Smash Bros’ vapid VR support is one of the worst Labo integrations going. You can either play single-player matches against AI or spectate and control the camera. If you’re playing, the stage appears so small it’s impossible to appreciate the 3D effect. The action, meanwhile, is too fast-paced to keep up. It’s like watching a pack of very fierce mice squabble over some cheese from afar.

Spectating is somehow the preferable choice, allowing you to zoom in and even look beyond the normal screen’s boundaries to see more of a stage. But even then the platform’s limitations snuff out any spark of excitement before long.  Without positional tracking and a sharper display, this is an utterly dire experience.

Score: 3/10

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Blur of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda VR

I didn’t think Nintendo would ever be able to get Breath of the Wild running in VR. So I guess credit where it’s due; you can play all of this modern masterpiece with Labo VR stuck to your face if you so choose. To do so, though, would be a crime to the good people of Hyrule. If you move your head to look around, you’ll discover the camera isn’t freely detached from Link. Instead, you’re simply moving the camera as you would in-game, centered around our hero. This can be incredibly nauseating, and it really detracts from the freedom one should experience in VR. Someone needs to sit the developers down and give them a long and enlightening talk about why this is the absolute worst way they could have implemented VR. We’ve all dreamed of wielding the Master Sword in VR but this is absolutely not the place to do it.

Score: 3/10

Bonus: Spice & Wolf VR

We haven’t actually played Spice & Wolf specifically on Labo VR, so it wouldn’t be fair to rate it. I can say, however, that even the PC VR version of the game isn’t very inspiring, with just a few short conversations to watch between two characters. The anime art is striking and the character animation is smooth, plus it’s an ideal fit for Switch VR’s limited capabilities. But from a pure content perspective, this is only worth picking up if you’re a die-hard fan of the show/manga.

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Shigeru Miyamoto: Nintendo Has ‘Not Fallen Behind With VR’

Nintendo’s Labo VR headset is far from the most advanced VR tech out there. But the company insists it hasn’t “fallen behind” with the technology.

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself said as much in a recent Nintendo Shareholders Q&A. “We have not fallen behind with either VR or network services,” Miyamoto said. “We worked on them from the very beginning, and have been experimenting with them in a variety of ways.”

For VR, that meant this year’s release of the Nintendo Labo VR Kit. Building on the existing Labo line, it offers a set of make-it-yourself cardboard peripherals, including a VR viewer you slot the Switch into. The experience it offers is undoubtedly creaky – it’s only got three degrees of freedom (3DOF) tracking and a blurry 720p display. But the DIY aspect of the product definitely has its charms.

“Because we don’t publicize this until we release a product, it may look like we’re falling behind,” Miyamoto continued. “In regards to VR, we think that we have created a product that is easy for our consumers to use in the recently released Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit. Nintendo consumers encompass a wide range of ages, including young children, so we will continue to create and announce products that can be enjoyed by anyone.”

While Labo VR certainly is accessible, the quality of compatible content on the platform, such as the VR support for The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild and Super Smash Bros Ultimate, is often pretty low. We’d love to see the company come out with a higher-grade device that offered a more palatable experience. We’ll keep out fingers crossed for now.

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Hack Kids In Tokyo Teaches Game Programming Using Nintendo Labo VR

Hack Kids In Tokyo Teaches Game Programming Using Nintendo Labo VR

Nintendo’s cardboard Labo creations have been an avenue for gamers to explore creativity, especially so for those of a younger age. Now, the company is utilizing its Nintendo Labo VR Kit in the Hack Kids in Tokyo special event where parents and children age 6 and up learn to program their own games using Toy-Con Garage VR.

Hack Kids in Tokyo is an event organized by Yahoo and welcomes elementary school children in third to sixth grade along with their parents. Toy-Con Garage VR is a way for Nintendo Labo VR users to take a look under the hood of over 60 games that have been created by Labo’s developers. Hack Kids will use this same program to teach kids and parents how the games are made and help them to develop their own.

The Hack Kids, , ,

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Super Smash Bros Ultimate Just Got Switch VR Support

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Just Got Switch VR Support

Nintendo just added VR support to another one of its tent pole Switch games – Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Yup, really.

Update 3.1.0 for the game brings limited support for the Switch’s Labo VR headset. You won’t embody a fighter in first-person, but you will watch and play from the sidelines as if you were really there. When using Labo you can either face off against one other computer player or watch four other CPU players duke it out. Sadly, there’s no support for bigger battles or online play.

You do get to choose from ‘dozens’ of the game’s stages. You can look around and see areas of each scene you wouldn’t on a traditional display, which is pretty cool. This also technically marks a VR debut for a heck of a lot of game franchises; the chance to see Samus, Solid Snake, Mega Man, Sonic and more in VR is enticing.

We haven’t tried the support for ourselves but we wouldn’t get too excited. Labo VR is a novel piece of kit, mainly intended for kids to use. But the Switch’s 720p display and limited horsepower hold it back from really bringing lots of content to life. We’ve played Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the headset, for example, and neither really held up.

Still, it’s better than nothing. Nintendo seems to be quite willing to throw VR support into its biggest games, which makes us think this won’t be the last we hear from the headset.

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild’s VR Update On Switch Is Very Bad

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild’s VR Update On Switch Is Very Bad

When Nintendo first announced that Zelda (and Mario) would be getting VR updates for the Switch Labo VR headset, I was cautiously optimistic. Obviously the games weren’t made for VR at all, but I thought maybe they worked that trademark Nintendo magic to craft something special. Bethesda remade Skyrim to work in VR and I’ve played lots of great third-person VR games like Astro Bot and Moss, so why can’t it work for Zelda too?

My optimism was misplaced. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in VR with the Switch Labo VR headset is one of the worst VR experiences you can possibly have. Let me explain.

For starters, the resolution is atrocious. Zelda on Switch runs at 720p when you’re in handheld mode. Since the VR update splits the screen in half (one image for each eye) when it’s up against the lenses, that basically means you’re seeing the game in 360p for each eye. It looks super pixelated.

Then to make matters worse, it’s not even really VR. When you turn your head from side-to-side the game translates that to the right thumbstick movement. This means you turn your head, but it just rotates the camera above Link since the game is in third-person. The correct way to do this would be to detach the camera from Link so that you can freely look around the world as Link runs independently, just as it works in Lucky’s Tale, Astro Bot, Moss, and yes — even Super Mario Odyssey’s VR mode.

So instead of actually being in VR, it’s basically like you’re holding the Switch up to your face to play the game in 3D. Sort of like you’d play a game on 3DS, but right up against your face. You even have to hold the headset while playing because it doesn’t come with a head strap. The 3D effect is nice, but the resolution is so low it’s hard to appreciate.

The big problem here is that it’s super uncomfortable and disorienting. When you turn your head from left to right you expect your view to shift laterally in that same perspective so you can look off at the mountains while Link glides ahead. Instead, it feels like someone is twisting your head on a corkscrew and it instantly made me feel uncomfortable, which is surprising because I never get motion sick.

It’s baffling that Nintendo apparently recognized this issue in Mario’s VR update but not in Zelda’s. Worth noting though is that the Mario content in VR is about 20 minutes of new little mini games, whereas they tried to port the entirety of Breath of the Wild to work on the Labo VR headset. That’s probably why it’s a half-way job.

As a massive fan of the Zelda series and someone that adores Breath of the Wild, this is a major disappointment. I wasn’t expecting much, I didn’t think they’d remake the game to be VR-first or anything, but I at least thought they’d make sure the camera worked correctly.

Hopefully Nintendo learns from this experiment and takes the appropriate lesson away from all this (they messed up Zelda’s VR support) and doesn’t assume it just means people don’t care or don’t like VR. As proven by the Switch modding and PC modding communities, if you do it correctly, Zelda in VR can be amazing.

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