Nintendo Switch: 9 Major Developments You Need To Know

If Nintendo won't break silence, we'll do it for them.

nintendo switch skyrim
Nintendo

Only Nintendo could release a feature-packed trailer for their first console in four years (or to those who never realised the Wii U was a new console, a decade), and then go silent.

Regardless, so far the Switch has been incredibly well received on the consumer side, with thousands of us imagining the potential of a 'portable home console experience' (Rocket League on your lunch break FTW), yet when it comes to brass tacks facts, they're far thinner on the ground.

At least officially, anyway.

We know the Switch is powered by mobile technology-style Tegra processor, but after that, well, at time of writing, we've had to do some digging to even get a handle on how much it's going to cost. Thankfully though, it appears more cool announcements are coming, starting with...

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9. It's Going To Ship With... An Inbuilt Projector?!

nintendo switch patent
Nintendo

According to a series of recent patents that were filed by Nintendo in the run-up to October's trailer, the Switch will feature a "cluster" of sensors including "an infrared camera, a light-emitting distance measuring sensor, an infrared emitter and a projector."

What this means, according to Polygon and a number of previous patents from earlier in the year, is that the Switch could "detect motion, shapes and gestures, and project images onto a “screen or the hand of a user.”

In gameplay terms, this means you'd have the ability to project a 3D image onto your hand, with the example given by Nintendo varying from that of a baseball being tossed back and forth between the game world and 'reality', to playing 'rock, paper scissors' with an in-game opponent.

It must be made clear that all of this stuff comes from patents that have been recently unearthed, so whilst it seems as though Nintendo are hanging back to unveil more information in the coming months, there's every chance the likes of a sensor/projector combo has been and gone off the table as the system was developed.

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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.