Interview With The Developers Of NINTENDO LABO Reveal New Interesting Details About The Product

Nintendo Labo Director Mr.Sagakuchi, Nintendo Switch Producer/Nintendo Labo Producer Mr.Kawamoto and Nintendo Labo Hardware Lead Mr. Ogasawara sit down to discuss about the Nintendo Labo in new developer interview.

Regarding the reactions the Nintendo Labo got when they revealed the product, Mr. Kawamoto says that he was very grateful for the positive reception the product got. Mr. Sagakuchi reminisces about the shot with the cardboard piano and how it was empty inside, leaving no explanation for the fans so he was concerned that the reaction would not be a positive one and was relieved to see that wasn't the case. As to Mr. Ogasawara, he says that he was anxious and excited at the same time and he was surprised, in the very best way, with how positive the reception was.

When asked about whee the idea for Nintendo Labo came, Mr. Sagakuchi says that he's always enjoyed thinking about interfaces and how he worked on projects such as the player control scheme for Splatoon. He enjoyed working on that because of the of the control- and-response relationship.

"I knew I wanted to make something new, and I knew that there are already a lot of videogames out in the world. Honestly, I just tried not to overlap with things that had already been done."

He mentions that they wanted to make something new that could only be achievable with the Nintendo Switch and its Joy-Con controllers and that's how the idea evolved into Nintendo Labo.



But what about the consumers? Mr. Sagakuchi goes into detail about what exactly is it that makes Nintendo Labo an appealing product for the players as they will be able working with cardboard sheets. He also mentions how the process became a lot more difficult due to this.

"I figured that building and repairing these things would be flexible and easy because we were dealing with engineered cardboard sheets. But once we decided that we wanted to design the Toy-Con creations so that you wouldn’t need any scissors or glue to assemble them, the project suddenly became very difficult."

Mr. Ogasawara mentions that they decided on the necessity of including a kitvery early on "because if tools were necessary we’d have to include them in the kits—but the more we thought about it the more we realized that we wanted to design the product so that you wouldn’t need any tools at all."

Mr. Sakaguchi tells us that the problems came when they went through consumer testing in the U.S and Tokyo, and these didn't go well at all. "Going into it, I thought that people might have trouble getting it exactly right, but as it turned out people had a lot of trouble with the making part. "I was mostly worried that people might think they’d built it correctly, even though it was all wrong."

The key was to start printing on the cardboard sheets so that consumers would know which side goes with what instead of randomly trying diferent pieces until they fit.

"We didn’t originally print anything on the surface of the cardboard. It soon became clear that without printing people got the front and back of the parts confused, and the build process started to fall apart. Through our consumer testing we realized that if the Toy-Con creations didn’t have a clearly-defined design, then it was hard for the customer to picture how they were supposed to look when completed."

After that, they decided it would be best that, at least, 50% of the surface of the specially-crafted cardboard sheets must be printed.



The whole concept of Nintendo Labo is for the players to be able to build their own creations with a little helping hand from the printed cardboard sheets, as well as the software that comes with it. It definitely is an interesting concept.

When talking about the development of Nintendo Labo, Mr. Kawamoto says that it was handled internally and that they never planned for it to be an educational product. Especially because the Toy-Con Garage is pretty much the software's tutorial that let's players even come up with their own creations while also offering players a helping hand.

"We did set out to make Toy-Con Garage as easy to use as possible, so that even young children can set up a project and experience the joy of seeing it work. The Toy-Con assembly process and the software were both created with this goal in mind."

Regarding the Toy-Con Garage, Mr. Sagakuchi says that they designed the games included with each Toy-Con in order to show off what a professional could do with the product. "You don’t need to jump into Toy-Con Garage to have a deep experience with Nintendo Labo. Simply building the Toy-Con projects in the kits and following along with the instructions is a fascinating experience. Building and discovering how the piano works, for example, is really intriguing."

Nintendo Labo is really looking like it will be a massive hit amongst consumers, especially because it isn't just cardboard but also a more complex, and yet accessible, product that will have people coming up with creations of their own thanks to all the tools the software gives them. For the full interview go to the Official Nintendo Labo website.

Make, Play, and Discover with Nintendo Labo! Have fun making DIY cardboard creations called Toy-Con, bring them to life with the technology of the Nintendo Switch system to play games, and discover the magic behind how each Toy-Con works. Express your creativity by customizing Toy-Con creations with your own color, stickers, paint, and more. You can even invent your own Toy-Con projects!