The Nintendo community has been progressively losing its mind amid a torrent of Switch 2 leaks over the holiday break. With Nintendo maintaining its silence on its next console — even as photos purporting to be of final hardware and internal components emerge and more and more questions get answers — the community has been doing things like getting into heated debates about the merits of 8nm versus 5nm microchip manufacturing processes (a subject that everyone involved was definitely an expert in).
So it wasn’t a total shock to see someone on the increasingly hysterical Switch 2 subreddit pretending to use their Switch Joy-Con on its side like a little, skinny mouse. Sure, why not? The poster was responding to speculation that this will be a feature of the new controllers, and that Switch 2 will have a gimmick after all.
In fact, there’s enough to support this theory that it’s worth not rejecting it out of hand. The latest and most convincing evidence is a pair of new photos that emerged over the weekend showing what purports to be a finalized, production Switch 2 Joy-Con. The photos sure look convincing, and tally with what’s already known about the Joy-Cons’ increased size and their new magnetic connection method (there’s no rail clip in sight). And there on the edge of the Joy-Con, in between its connector port and the enlarged SL button, is something that looks exactly like the optical sensor on the underside of a mouse.
This “laser” sensor was previously reported by the leaker NextHandheld — the same leaker who confirmed the Switch 2’s name and provided new details about the Joy-Cons and dock back in December, then tortured the Nintendo community with convincing but apparently AI-altered photos of the Switch 2 itself over the holidays. (It’s a long story.) NextHandheld speculated that the sensor might be used in a similar way to Lenovo’s Legion Go PC handheld, which allows a detached controller to be used as a mouse (albeit in a less elegant upright position).
If you want to go full Charlie Day conspiracy meme, you could link this theory to the (never verified) reports from a few months back that the Switch 2’s shoulder buttons would also operate as scroll wheels, or some shipping data unearthed months ago that mentions “mouse sole” components.
It’s a lot. And, at the moment, it’s all just connect-the-dots speculation rather than sourced reporting, so please take with the appropriate pinch of salt. It’s a little surprising that Nintendo would add extra complication to the Joy-Cons; they’re complex, miniaturized and difficult to repair as it is, and it seemed likelier that features like the infrared sensor would be cut, rather than new ones added.
But… if that isn’t an optical mouse sensor… what is it?
Source：https://www.polygon.com/nintendo/504149/switch-2-joy-con-mouse
