Mouse controls are one of the Switch 2’s big new features. Optical sensors allow the upgraded Joy-Con controllers to aim and navigate on the console as if you were playing on a PC. But the Switch 2 is also a portable console. Mostly people aren’t playing it at a desk. Don’t worry, Nintendo says, the mouse controls work great on your pant leg too!
“Usually the table is quite far away from where you’re sitting on the sofa, so it generally depends on the material, but we’ve made adjustments so that you can control the mouse on your pants,” Nintendo producer Kouichi Kawamoto confirmed during a Q&A roundtable held yesterday, Gamesradar reports. He explained that the functionality arose out of his love of PC gaming, but the team had to make sure the feature worked across more potential scenarios.
Drag X Drive was one of the new internally-developed games Nintendo showed off during this week’s Switch 2 Direct. It utilizes the mouse controls and motion controls to play wheelchair basketball, with players moving each Joy-Con on its side to simulate spinning the wheels on the chair. It’s currently set to release sometime this summer.
“I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to play this, but Drag X Drive, you can play it by using the mouse controller on your pants,” Kawamoto added. “There were some people on the development team, [for whom] that was their preferred way of playing the game.”
As someone who has tried to play even conventional real-time strategy games with a mouse on jeans, that’s great to hear. I assume it will work equally well on the sofa cushion next to you. A number of Switch 2 games will make use of the mouse controls, including Metroid Prime 4 for aiming. Civilization 7, which is getting a launch-day Switch 2 upgrade, is another.
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