I don’t know what kind of a person looked at the Nintendo Labo and thought that it was possibly meant to be a response to VR – maybe it was because of that robot game, which seems to leverage something like a makeshift VR headset, or maybe because of Google Cardboard – but apparently that was a thing.
Well, in what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime has confirmed that that is not the case, and that the Labo is meant to be its very own thing. “It’s not meant to be some sort of competitive answer (to virtual reality). It’s meant to be something totally unique, totally unexpected,” Fils-Aime said. “We do believe that there will be experimentation that some of these communities will do on their own. And from our perspective that’s a good thing.”
That makes sense- again, this is far more versatile, and too different, than VR. I don’t think they are meant to compete at all. While I am sure Nintendo is working away on VR in some capacity, I also don’t think that as it stands right now, it fits with their mantra of what games are or should be.