This cardboard add-on might on the face of it seem a flimsy gimmick, but there are few fools at Nintendo. History tells us they know what they're doing.
"Wild", "awesome", "insane and I love it" - just a handful of reactions plucked from the gaming press on Wednesday as news of Nintendo's cardboard experiment became known.
Ah yes, the gaming press, those fonts of wisdom, those always-accurate bellwethers of gamer opinion
Another case of critics of a thing prizing novelty in said thing above all else because they're so immersed in it they've become jaded, while most consumers of the thing have much less contact with it overall and so typically prefer more of the same things they already like and enjoy. And few fools at Nintendo? Snicker. Forgetting the WiiU already are we.
Meanwhile - hello, I'm a person who used to work in GAME and ran one of their stores for a while during the height of the Wii's popularity. Do you know what the one set of things we couldn't sell most people for love nor money was? The novelty plastic controller addons. And that's not an "in my store" thing, it was a running joke when store managers spoke to each other. I sincerely doubt making them out of cardboard this time around is going to lead to them being radically successful.
People love the Switch because it can be a home console and/or a handheld console and it's pretty good at both, I've almost never seen anyone using the existing, in-built gimmickry like the super-cool posse in the adverts breaking out portable multiplayer Mario Kart at their rooftop wine party, so I'm unsure why additional hilariously overpriced cardboard addon gimmickry would find any purchase. I don't doubt a few of these will sell, but they'll tear, or get wet and fall apart, or get chucked in a cupboard with all the other "novelty" gifts/toys folk get.