Nintendo takes another stab at interactive gaming with Nintendo Labo

Following on from this week's mini-direct, Nintendo announced that it had something else to show late last night. Immediately speculation began running wild but nobody could have guessed what Nintendo had planned. Last night, the company announced Nintendo Labo, a new range of cardboard-based “build and play” experiences designed to inspire creativity.

Nintendo Labo is essentially a cardboard toy line aimed at children. The idea is that you buy a Labo set and with that, you can fold the cardboard into something that can be used to play various Nintendo Switch games. You can create a piano, a fishing rod, a bike and even a robot suit. You can then prop up the Switch and insert the joy-cons to use these creations to interact with the game, turning your cardboard model into a peripheral of its own.

The piano for instance works by inserting the right Joy-Con inside, which will then use the IR Motion Camera to detect which keys are being pressed as you play. Each note pressed on the piano will then play out of the Nintendo Switch's speakers.

There will be two different Nintendo Labo kits available at launch in April. The Variety Kit includes the fishing rod, motorbike, piano, an RC car and a house. Meanwhile, the robot kit features a wearable robot suit. These will be fairly expensive purchases though, with the variety kit costing $69.99 and the robot kit costing $79.99.

KitGuru Says: The Nintendo Labo kits are aimed at inspiring creativity in children, which seems like a worthy cause. However, those prices are quite high for what amounts to cardboard cutouts and some mini-games. Then again, that's just my take on it as someone who doesn't have kids. What do you guys think of Nintendo's crazy new idea?

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