A Closer Look At One Of The Nintendo Switch 2's Newest Features, Teased Back In 2017

The Switch 2 might not be a radical reinvention of what came before, but Nintendo’s new hardware does sport some unique quirks, distinguishing it from the original handheld hybrid that arrived back in 2017. One of these features is the bigger Joy-Con controllers which now connect to the screen via magnetic attachments. A brief clip on the company’s website gives us a better look at how it works, but it’s an innovation that Nintendo first teased over eight years ago.

The current Switch has its Joy-Con controllers attach by sliding through a railing on the side until a locking mechanism clicks them into place. Owners then press a very (very) small black button on the back to release the mechanism to slide them back out again. With the Switch 2 there’s no sliding and seemingly a whole lot less friction overall, as the Joy-Con merely click into place and hold on through the force of magnets alone.

A short snippet recently published on Nintendo’s website shows this all happening in slow motion, including how the (much) bigger triggers on the back of the Joy-Con are held to release the magnets and pull the controllers back away from the screen. It’s a much more elegant solution and, if combined with other Joy-Con features like reported anti-drift Hall Effect joysticks, mouse-like optical sensors, and a mysterious new C button, could make the Switch 2 feel like a bigger upgrade than it initially appears.

But it turns out that magnetic Joy-Con, one of the primary points of speculation throughout months of Switch 2 leaks, weren’t actually a secret at all. Nintendo revealed it was exploring the feature as early as its pre-release breakdown of the original Switch back in 2017. Here is Nintendo executive and Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoshiaki Koizumi teasing the design possibility to Nintendo of America’s Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, all the way back then:

“We tried a lot of different things in terms of connecting the Joy-Con to the console and one that I was particularly excited about at the time was using magnets where you would just snap it right to the console, but as you would play sometimes it would just fall into your lap,” he said at the time. “But because we still wanted to have something that was sturdy enough for you to hold onto the console but also gave you that sort of satisfying snap that the magnets did that’s how we came up with the mechanical rails that give you a click.”

Nintendo has a way of making its inventions, whether in hardware or the games themselves, feel like they magically appeared out of nowhere, but often it turns out that they were leftover ideas from long and arduous trial and error processes, later repurposed when the moment is right or newer tech makes them more feasible. So it seems to be with the Switch 2's magnets. I’m super-eager to try them myself and see how they hold up. Hopefully, Nintendo worked out all the kinks this time around.

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