Nintendo Answers All Our Questions, Finally

After years of playing on the Nintendo Switch and other consoles, it’s finally time for a refresh. The Nintendo Switch 2 recently confirmed a June(ish) launch date and a price of $449.99, although it’s pausing pre-orders in the United States until Wednesday as the company assesses the impact of tariffs. With that, we had so many burning questions, and luckily had the chance to ask a Nintendo product developer a number of them.

Though we’ve know quite a bit about the possibility of gaming on your literal pants, experimental features like the GameChat C button, and on games like Mario Kart World, and FromSoftware’s follow-up to Elden Ring, there are still tons of answers Nintendo gave us that we would like to share. Sitting down in person with Nintendo’s senior vice president of product development Nate Bihldorff, Inverse writer Trone Dowd and Deputy Gaming Editor Shannon Liao asked away.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Shannon: What did you work on when it comes to the Switch 2? Any things you want to highlight in your role?

I came up through localization, so I used to work on individual titles exclusively. Now that I'm in the department, I get to dip in here and there on every project. I was fortunate to be involved from an early stage in the localization group. When I first started, we handled fewer languages, but now we handle French, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese, and European Portuguese, so projects have really grown in size because of voice recording, casting, and language studio sessions. I get more of the 10,000-foot view of projects now. I try not to be too annoying to my staff! I desperately want to be a writer again when we start working on these games.

Trone: Why choose to launch the Switch 2 with Mario Kart World, as opposed to another game?

Mario Kart World is, in my mind anyways, one of the most broadly accessible games possible. The skill ceiling is incredibly high for people who are really into it. You saw this with Mario Kart Deluxe as well. But if you really want to play it at a high level, at the highest speed, the highest competitive levelonline, you're going to spend a lot of time with this game, finding the best routes, finding the best techniques, all that.

But at the same time, this is a game that, like Mario Kart Deluxe, has as many settings as you'd like to basically make it so that a kid, really any age, or a person of any skill level can also do it, so stuff like auto accelerates, stuff like smart steering, which basically guides you back onto track, which we actually have been able to have. Those are the sorts of things that you can basically turn them all on. If you have a five year old kid, give them the controller played on 50cc, they may beat you. You also have the some slight nudges to the formula of Mario Kart that, such as, when you get an item now it automatically hangs behind you instead of actually a whole button.

That's just another thing that makes it a little bit more accessible. So to my mind, not only does Mario Kart 8 clearly demonstrate that there's a lot of appetite for racing games, broadly speaking, because it sold very well over the course the entire Switch generation, but really, it comes back to that idea that this is a game that really is going to satisfy any kind of Nintendo gamer. Even somebody who isn't a Nintendo gamer yet might be later. For that reason, it really matches perfectly with the system.

“Sometimes casual gamers may look at a game just from a graphical perspective and assume that's where the power of the system is going, whereas for other games, it may be in other hidden ways.”

Bigger isn’t always better

Shannon: In the West, we're trending towards bigger, more graphically intense games, but Japan seems to be bucking the trend with sometimes minimal experiences that people still really love and are very popular. So what do you make of this trend that Japan is sticking to its guns, and bucking the Western trend? And where do you think we're headed?

I don't know that I would categorize Japan as a whole going in that direction, because you see a lot of variety coming out of Japanese developers, same as Western developers. But when you look at some of the games that we're showing off here, you find that we're utilizing a very powerful system in very different ways. Whereas you might have a developer that really wants to make a realistic, graphically intense game, say it's a hardcore shooter or something like that, where they're basically taking all the tools at their disposal for the Nintendo Switch 2 and devoting them to having the very best textures, really rich cinematics, and going in that particular direction.

Whereas our developer working on Donkey Kong Bananza has created something that is intentionally cartoon-like. It's intentionally a game that is meant to be very expressive, and feel like you're playing a cartoon that's come to life. But clearly a lot of the horsepower is going towards the fact that you can destroy literally everything as you're wandering around.

It's sort of a hidden cost that sometimes casual gamers may look at a game just from a graphical perspective and assume that's where the power of the system is going, whereas for other games, it may be in other hidden ways. Mario Kart World is another great example. In previous Mario Kart games, you were in a very finite area because you were loading the individual track. Now in Mario Kart World, the entire world is rendered. You have to be able to, as you come around the corner, see what is actually there in that world. There are tricks they can do with loading, but it really comes down to how different developers devote the resources available to them on our system, or any system, based on what vision they have for the game. It's always a trade-off, and you can only do so much without paying the price somewhere else.

Shannon: I was curious, from a product and software standpoint, what kind of new things have you been able to do or other software developers are able to do that are exciting with the C button or mouse controls?

I'm glad you brought up the C button, because it's an important part of this system. It needs to have some dedicated memory allocated to it so that people can access it at any given time. What I love about it is that it provides great value and unique value to literally anybody playing on this system.

You could be a core gamer that wants to bring it up and literally see your friend's face when you're beating them at something. A lot of people are going to play the same game and see your instant reactions there. I'll use my nephew, as an example. He's 14. Grew up playing online games, as opposed to couch co-op games. I have a feeling that he's going to play a lot of games where all he's doing is playing the game in full screen, but he has a bunch of his friends on GameChat that he's just talking with. Maybe they're not even sharing their gaming experience. Maybe his friends aren't even playing a game. They're doing something else, but they have an active line.

I often have to check myself because I'm an older gamer. I grew up used to sitting next to people when I was playing with them, and GameChat does a really good job of getting as close to that experience as you can, even if you're not in the same area. There are levels, of course — right out of the box, you'll be able to do audio because of the built-in mic. But if you choose to get a camera accessory, or if you have a camera already (probably a lot of people do after Zoom meetings), then you can even have an immersive experience where it feels like you're streaming a game.

“There are a lot of things that a mouse does better, whether you're talking about selection or games that have traditionally been on PC.”

I'm not going to ever be a YouTube streamer, but I certainly see the appeal of having an overlay on the game that you're playing and showing something off to your friends, saying, "Hey, this is a really cool game you haven't seen yet. Check this out."

I'm also excited to see how people use mouse control. One of the great things about Nintendo Switch 2 is that there's just a palette of tools available depending on what developers want to do. There are a lot of things that a mouse does better, whether you're talking about selection or games that have traditionally been on PC but haven't been the same when trying to select units and such. It's really a natural fit for first-person games too.

I hope you got some hands-on time with Metroid Prime. What I love about that experience is it shows off a developer who is thinking very proactively about accommodating whatever way you might want to play. The idea that you can detach the Joy-Con in an area where you want to just use gyro controls — that feels really good, but then simply turning your wrist automatically turns on mouse control.

Obviously, it's not something that everyone has to do. You'll probably find developers who don't want anyone to accidentally do that, so they'll hide mouse control behind a settings menu, which is fine. But being able to access that if you want to — both for our own developers and our partner developers — it's like you just spread this buffet. Let us help you bring your vision to life. Whatever kind of game you want to make, here are the tools that you can use. It opens another door. Did you try out Drag X Drive?

Shannon: Yeah.

The first time I tried it, I thought "this is crazy," and I wasn't good at it at first. I've worked at Nintendo for 25 years, so I expect to be really good at games the second I pick them up — maybe that's professional pride or something — but I expected to be awesome and I wasn't. Once I got it, I understood how to navigate it.

It got me thinking that I didn't even know if there is an entire genre on PC of dual mouse control games. I don't even know if that exists.

And I was like, "Why doesn't it?" That's a perfect example of what I'm excited to see — what we've already got cooking on this system, and what will happen over the life of the system as other developers start building on these ideas.

“I've worked at Nintendo for 25 years, so I expect to be really good at games the second I pick them up.”

Shannon: Following up on the pants thing with Drag X Drive, have you been playing on your pants as well? Yesterday they were talking about how everyone likes playing on their pants, and I wondered if you have any pants recommendations.

To be honest, I haven't experimented with that. But I do expect that people will find what's comfortable for them when it comes to mouse control, whether it's Drag X Drive or other applications.

It's funny — to show you how technically illiterate I can be at times, when we first started playing around with this, I was like, "Oh, does that even work?" And people were like, "Optical mice work on anything. This isn't a trackball." I hadn't been paying attention to mouse technology for so long.

One final point on that — I don't know if they have it on the floor for you to play around with, but there will be system-level mouse sensitivity settings that you'll be able to adjust until you feel totally confident. So whether it's the type of pants you're wearing or the amount of motion you feel comfortable doing with each game, you'll be able to fine-tune that. For some games, you might just need the slightest little wrist motions to get the full range of motion. That's such a personal thing, but it will be in the system settings.

Trone: That's cool. I wanted to follow up on mouse controls. Are you encouraging developers to use mouse controls exclusively for their games, or are you open to having games that only work with mouse controls? In my mind, that opens the door to PC games that only work best with a mouse and don't have a controller option.

I don't think we would mandate it, but it's 100% on the table that if a developer doesn't want to have anything but mouse controls function in their game, they can certainly do that. We have to be honest — there are certain games, maybe they're already out or maybe they're in a developer's mind right now, that flat-out have one way that's going to work. We encourage them to do it.

It's similar to Drag X Drive. That's a game where the experience is this specific control scheme. If you were to convert that to play in handheld mode with just analog sticks, it's not going to be the same experience at all. So certain games in certain genres fall into that category where they're really meant to be played in one way and not in any other.

You might see that with motion-based games in the same way, where the vision of the developer is "it's awesome to just swing this thing around and I'm going to build an entire game around it." It's possible that sometimes you can shoehorn other control methods into that, but some developers just don't want to. At the end of the day, the consumer will decide.

“You're also integrating this app that will help me finally find the rest of the Korok seeds dotted around the landscape.”

Trone: On the C button — obviously, we know Nintendo is going to be patching in social features for games like Mario Party. Will third parties also have the option to go ahead and take their old Switch games and integrate some of the C button functionality and camera stuff?

100%. Even just looking at what we're showing right now, there's variety in terms of how we've approached Nintendo Switch 2 editions. The Legend of Zelda games, both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom's Nintendo Switch 2 editions, take advantage of the extra horsepower of the system so you get better loading times, better frame rate, and better resolution. But then you're also integrating this app that will help me finally find the rest of the Korok seeds dotted around the landscape.

Then you take Super Mario Party Jamboree — totally different implementation, much more focused on mouse controls. What can we do with that? We're making a bunch of mouse control mini-games and mini-games that employ the camera to get people up out of their seat and yelling at the TV.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. The beauty of game chat and audio and video interaction is that this is a tool we hope every developer uses, not in a prescriptive way, but to bring their own vision to life.

Shannon: Since you have the 10,000-foot view of all your games, what are some games that you're excited about or that you feel are innovative and push the whole industry forward? This double mouse thing that you mentioned was kind of interesting.

If we could circle back to Donkey Kong Bananza, that's one I'm personally very excited about, not only because I'm an old-school Donkey Kong fan. The idea of going back to his very destructive ways when he was just wrecking construction sites is appealing on some level, but what that game is doing with terrain deformation is something I just haven't experienced before.

I'm used to platformers where you're climbing over things and seeing a great height, figuring out how you want to climb up it. Now, it's going in the other direction—how can I burrow through that? How can I go down? There are games out there that use this sort of technology to bring the joy of destruction, but I've never quite seen it like this before, especially with how gleeful Donkey Kong seems the entire time he's doing it.

Trone: Do you consider that a sequel to Donkey Kong 64 or is it being considered its own thing?

I think it's just its own thing. I haven't asked the developers — they probably have some stock answer for that — but to me, it seems very much its own thing, although as you've probably already seen in the trailer, there are cameos from K. Rool and a few other characters.