We have an interesting story about what could possibly be a Nintendo dev kit, or at least a prototype.
This story comes from an anonymous poster from 4Chan, so take it with a grain of salt. But it has some details about the NG Switch that could be interesting if they turn out to be true.
As recovered and shared on reddit, this is what the anonymous poster had to say:
“I work for the TSA at a fairly large airport on the west coast. A large pelican case came through the X-ray and got pulled for screening, and when I asked the guy questions about the case, he asked that he get a private screening for the contents. He and a coworker ended up going into another room with me and a supervisor, and they popped the locks on the case.
Inside was what looked like a large horizontal computer looking thing, almost like a giant internet modem if I had to describe it. The weird thing is it had a controller with it, and it didn’t really look finished (almost like a busted 3rd party little brother controller), but had the normal ABXY buttons, triggers, sticks, etc. only weird thing about it is it had like 2 mouse scroll wheels next to the triggers.
After screening the machine and controller, our machine alarmed, so we had to do a check of the guy’s personal backpack and pat down etc. only reason I’m making a post here is that he had Nintendo business cards stating that they were some sort of hardware developer/engineers. (I forgot the exact title) in Research development.
Idk, the actual machine seemed about the size of an Xbox One or so, so it seems like Nintendo might be out of the portable console business. Who knows if this is actually their next console or what, but it was exciting and I couldn’t really keep it to myself. That’s all.”
Again, we do not vouch for the accuracy of this account, and most of these details are probably unimportant. The size of the device, for example, may not reflect the size of the actual unit, as what matters in a dev kit are the hardware parts inside as opposed to replicating the console.
But the main point of interest here is the unusual detail that’s been added to this apparent Nintendo device. There are apparently 2 scroll wheels, like the wheels in the middle of a mouse, that sits next to the controller triggers.
Could this be a new control method from the game company that’s done the most experimenting with control methods? It would be an interesting throwback to an older control scheme that’s no longer in vogue; the dial controller. On the Atari VCS, it was referred to as the paddle controller, but whatever name you used for it, it was at one point the default control scheme for the hundreds of Pong clones that hit the market in the 1970s.
While widely regarded as antiquated, it was still recognized as an optimal control scheme for certain games. For example, because it was the ideal controller for Breakout, it was the preferred controller for Breakout clone Arkanoid. Subsequently, dial controllers were released for platforms that had Arkanoid on them, including the Family Computer, the PlayStation, and even the Nintendo DS.
It’s possible that these are intended to test some form of variable setting on the triggers, instead of controllers themselves. This may in fact suggest that Nintendo is testing true analog triggers for their controllers. Would this be something that Nintendo would be adding in, much like Xbox and PlayStation? It would certainly be something that third parties would want to have and use for ports of their games on Nintendo.
If the NG Switch does end up having some form of dial controller, it would allow for some ports of older arcade and console games, but would also be curious for the new gameplay patterns it would enable. That’s the sort of thing that sounds so crazy, you would believe Nintendo would try it.
