Nintendo Is Teasing A New Controller And Fans Are Going Wild
Nintendo might be announcing a new controller for the Nintendo Switch this week, and fans are hoping that it will pay homage to one of Nintendo's classic systems. As reported by VGC, Nintendo requested a confidentiality agreement for a device described only as a "game controller" earlier this month. Initially, all information about the controller would be held for six months, placing the full end of the agreement sometime in March. However, it was updated to state that some of that information would be released publicly by the end of this week, on Friday, September 24.
This information led VGC to believe that a Nintendo Direct would occur this week in order to reveal the controller and sure enough, Nintendo announced it would be having a Nintendo Direct on September 23 at 3 PM PT shortly after VGC's report released. The announcement of the Direct seems to confirm that Nintendo intends to announce the game controller this week, among other things. Nintendo followed a similar path when it announced the wireless SNES controller for the Nintendo Switch back in 2019, which coincided with SNES games getting added to the Nintendo Switch Online Service later that year. For this reason, it's believed that the new controller could coincide with new games being added to the online service. But what kind of controller would be kept under lock and key?
It could be an N64 controller
Between rumors that Nintendo 64 games are coming to the Nintendo Switch Online service and some red string detective work by VGC, it seems like the controller could be modeled after the strange, innovative N64 controller. According to VGC, the "design" images available on the FCC site show very little, just images of a vague rectangle with placement for the FCC labels. While the designs don't give much to go off, they roughly equate to the placement of the labels on the original N64 controller.
There have been rumors of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games coming to the online service, so it's possible this controller is some sort of Game Boy peripheral. Only two consoles are available on Nintendo's online service currently, the NES and SNES, and both systems have compatible controllers being sold by Nintendo. It would make sense that if another console and some of its library were added to the service, Nintendo would want to sell a controller to go along with it. Of course, it's possible that N64 and Game Boy games will get added to the service without Nintendo feeling the need to make a Game Boy controller, since the system didn't have a separate controller. Luckily, Nintendo will reveal the truth very soon and you might get your hands on some sweet, sweet N64 games.