Nintendo Switch producer Yoshiaki Koizumi recently made an appearance in a new video in which he discusses the console, its controllers and information regarding their development.
The video, titled “5 Things You May Not Know About Nintendo Switch,” features Nintendo Minute personalities Kit and Krysta as they ask Koizumi about various facets of the Nintendo Switch.
Koizumi reveals the final arrangement of the Joy-Cons within the Joy-Con Grip was not originally intended.
“We actually had them arranged a little bit angled, sort of like a V-shape, but we made some adjustments so they’d be a little bit easier to play, and have them now in parallel,” Koizumi said.
Koizumi also shares the development team’s observation that the Joy-Con Grip’s final design resembled a face.
“Now, it’s not something that really was apparent to us when they were outright arranged in a V-shape, but once we started to put them parallel to each other we noticed it looks a little bit like a face,” Koizumi said.
He also explains where the name “Joy-Con” originated.
“We wanted to take the word ‘joy’ from ‘enjoy,’ because we want everyone to enjoy these controllers, but we also wanted to mix that with the idea that you were joining it to the Grip,” Koizumi said. “But you can also hand the controller to someone else and share the joy — and you are joined together.”
Later, Koizumi shares how his team eventually landed on the final method of attaching the Joy-Cons to the Nintendo Switch console.
“We tried a lot of different things in terms of connecting the Joy-Con to the console, and one I was particularly excited about at the time was using magnets, where you could just, like, snap it right to the console,” Koizumi said. “But as you would play, sometimes it would just fall into your lap. But because we still wanted that have something that was sturdy enough for you to hold onto the console, but also gave you that kind of satisfying snap that the magnets did, that’s how we came up with the mechanical rails that give you a click.”
Lastly, Koizumi discusses why the team chose neon blue and neon red as alternative colors for the Joy-Cons.
“So, we actually weren’t thinking about having two different colors on the same console at the same time in the beginning. We had laid out a bunch of different Joy-Cons in different colors, thinking about what our options were,” Koizumi said. “But they were all matched up in same color sets until someone slipped on one of each color onto a single console and suddenly everybody gathered around and said, ‘Ah, that looks great!’ … Sometimes mistakes happen and they end up being the right mistakes.”
As a follow-up, Nintendo Minute’s Kit asked Koizumi which color scheme he would be going with at launch: gray or neon.
“I’m gonna go for the two colors,” Koizumi answered. “I love these colors.”
The Nintendo Switch launches worldwide this Friday, March 3rd.
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Written by Daniel Dell-Cornejo
Daniel is an editor at Nintendo Wire. Always with his head in the clouds, he is never apart from his creative thoughts – a blessing for an aspiring fiction writer. As a journalist and lifelong gamer, he aims to provide readers with the very best in Nintendo coverage.
