Nintendo apparently has more up its sleeve for Nintendo Labo, the recently announced cardboard peripherals for the Nintendo Switch, with an interesting feature named Toy Con Garage.
With Toy Con Garage, Nintendo Switch owners will be able to make their own customized Nintendo Labo creations, stretching the value of the expensive but innovative cardboard accessories.
Nintendo Labo Toy Con Garage: What Can You Do With It?
At the Nintendo Labo kickoff event in New York City, Nintendo unveiled Toy Con Garage, a software feature of the cardboard peripherals that allows gamers to customize their Nintendo Labo accessories.
Nintendo presented a simple interface that will allow various parts of the $70 Variety Kit to be merged into unique combinations. Upon launching the Toy Con Garage feature, players will be given the chance to choose from several blocks, connecting input options for the Nintendo Switch's Joy-Con controllers to a list of output options. For example, users may choose the left Joy-Con's up button as the input and the vibration feature of the right Joy-Con as the output so that whenever the button on the left Joy-Con is pressed, the right Joy-Con will vibrate.
One of the examples of Nintendo Labo is an electric guitar that was created using the Piano software that comes with the Variety Kit. The instrument was made possible by adding custom cardboard pieces that can be fashioned out of scraps lying around in any household.
The Toy Con Garage feature was actually briefly showed off in the Nintendo Labo announcement trailer starting at the 1:30 mark. The Nintendo Switch screen was showing two boxes, with the first box being the input option of touching the screen and the second box being the output option of the right Joy-Con vibrating, causing the cardboard man to fall flat on its face.
Nintendo Labo Now Looks Like It's Worth $70
When the Nintendo Labo was announced, one of the biggest criticisms against it was the price. For the cardboard peripherals and software offered by the Variety Kit, the $70 price tag seemed a bit too much.
However, the announcement of the Toy Con Garage feature changes everything. This means that Nintendo Switch gamers are not limited to the five projects that are included in the Variety Kit.
Toy Con Garage may spawn a healthy community where users can share their projects for others to try, fostering a level of real-world imagination and creativity that is rarely, if ever, seen in the video game industry.
It remains to be seen, however, how much control Nintendo will give to users over the input and output options offered by Toy Con Garage. It is also unclear if the $80 Robot Kit will carry the feature. That said, the Nintendo Labo feature holds a lot of promise and will further drive up the hype for the cardboard accessories.
