Unless you've just crawled out of a cave you've spent the last year in, you'll know that yesterday afternoon we were finally able to put the speculation to rest and get an official look at Nintendo Switch 2. The successor to Nintendo's current hardware was unveiled in a brief trailer that lasted just over two minutes, yet left us with tons of information, plus confirmation and a very brief first look at Mario Kart 9.
But apart from knowing how the magnetic attachment of the new Joy-Con works or the difference in size with the current Switch, we still have some questions about the console's external functions or connections. The Dock was barely seen for a moment and we don't know if it will have the same number of ports as the current OLED model. And perhaps, much more importantly than that - where is the microphone?
One of the biggest criticisms of Nintendo Switch, especially given its long lifecycle, is the lack of facilities for communicating with other players in the various online modes of some of its games. Sure, there are always diegetic on-screen ways to let your Splatoon 3 teammate know to move to another part of the map or have your back, but the systems are so limited and the current demand for multiplayer is so high that adding a microphone was almost a must in the console's design.
However, as much as we watch the trailer over and over again, we're struggling to find that audio input - could it be on one of the Joy-Con? It seems like a pretty logical choice, especially if you're playing with the console in the dock, but there's no such input on any of Nintendo's future mouse controllers.
So back to the console itself, and this is where the painstaking search begins. It looks like the folks at Nintendo Life might have found the solution, finding a tiny port on the top of the Switch 2's chassis. It's small and yet somewhat familiar, as the slot resembles the Nintendo DS microphone.
With a microphone, the multiplayer possibilities on the Switch 2 multiply to almost equal those of Sony or Microsoft consoles.
What do you think, is that the Nintendo Switch 2 microphone, and do you think it will be a revolution for online gaming on the console?