Nintendo shows off Labo's Garage mode, a programming toolkit for kids
UPDATE: Program your own Toy-Con using the infra-red camera.
UPDATE 22/3/18 10.15am: Another week, another genuinely impressive video showing off the capabilities of Nintendo Labo, the Switch's upcoming cardboard-based accessory system.
Today's footage shows how you can create your own Toy-Con and program them using the Labo software's Garage creator mode. Specifically, this time, how you can do all of this using inputs from the Joy-Con's infra-red camera to detect other objects.
Toy-Con creations use the right Joy-Con's IR sensor to beam light around its environment and react accordingly. Moving objects flagged up with reflective tape can be spotted by the camera - which then becomes an input to do something within the Garage software's logic. You can then add processes and an output.
Honestly, it's more fun just to watch it all in action:
We hope to have hands-on impressions very soon.
UPDATE 15/3/18 9.45am: Nintendo Labo, the Switch's upcoming cardboard creation system, includes a mode where you can reprogram your designs and make your own.
It's called Garage, and it is shown off in the video below in far greater detail than we've seen before.
There's an easy to understand input-process-output system where you can combine a specific controller action, movement or signal with a process and then an output.
So you could, for example, program in a shake of the Switch's Joy-Con, add the process of counting to a certain number, and then have it react - making an explosion noise, or vibrating.
More impressive still is the ability to set varying outputs depending on the input - so you can strum and shake a Joy-Con to make it react like you're playing air guitar, or even program one Labo design (like the fishing rod) to control another (like the RC car).
Hopefully we'll have hands-on impressions any day now.