Nintendo wowed us all by officially announcing the Nintendo Switch 2 in January, including a quick look at the Joy-Cons coming with the console – which appears to function as a mouse, not just a controller. Now we’ve got more information on it, thanks to an official patent of the design.
You can see the full patent here, but the key part is that the information on the page states that along with the usual buttons and such, there’s “a sensor for mouse operation. […] The sensor for mouse operation detects reflected light from a detected surface, the light changing by moving over the detected surface in a state in which either the first side surface or the second side surface is placed on the detected surface.” Well, there you have it – actual real-life mouse functionality.
The Joy-Cons for the Nintendo Switch 2 look similar to the original controllers in terms of shape, but we know from the reveal trailer that the colorway is swapped, the casing now being black with a pop of color running down the side.
Nintendo originally filed the patent in early 2023, which isn’t surprising as the company will have been making the Switch 2 in the background for many years now. The patent also confirms the ‘inventors’ of the new Joy-Con system as Masaya Takei and Kazuhiko Koriyama, members of the hardware team at Nintendo.
There are likely other industry members that knew about this functionality, too – in a recent interview with IGN, Civilization 7’s executive producer Dennis Shirk said that the design is “intriguing”, and that he “loves what they’re doing with the controllers”, and notes that developers make some trade-offs when it comes to putting games on consoles. Perhaps Civilization 7 will work better with the new mouse-y Joy-Cons – not that I’ve played it yet – as it feels very much like a mouse-and-keyboard game more than something I’d play on a controller.
Naturally, my brain immediately goes to us getting a Sims Nintendo Switch version that we can use the mouse-cons with, but other people are probably expecting FPS games and shooters that’ll work much better with a mouse-type control over a regular controller.
I also wonder about the potential longevity of using a Joy-Con against a surface. Will it take damage? Will it get scraped? We all know about the original Joy-Con’s issues with drift, so let’s hope that the new iteration doesn’t follow the same path.
We’re gearing up for the big release by keeping an eye out for more of the best Nintendo Switch accessories and upcoming Switch games, so we suggest you check out our guides, too.