The announcement Nintendo fans have been hoping for has not yet happened, but they really have just unveiled a new piece of hardware.
We can’t tell you why we know, but we very much suspect that the Nintendo Switch 2 will not be announced on Thursday, October 10, despite what the most recent rumours suggest.
We’ve no idea when it will be unveiled – according to Nintendo it could be anywhere from Friday to March 31 – but there have been a lot of false alarms, including a recent Nintendo Direct that only talked about a museum in Japan and what seemed to be a teasing email about the October 10 rumours.
Now they’ve gone one step further by announcing new hardware that is… not a console or even necessarily video game related. Instead, it’s an interactive alarm clock called Alarmo.
Going back more than a decade, Nintendo has been strangely preoccupied with the idea of getting a good night’s sleep, with the most recent manifestation of their obsession being mobile app Pokémon Sleep.
However, the new Alarmo device isn’t so much dedicated to helping you sleep but annoying you when you wake up.
It does monitor your movements at night, offering up a little chart to see how much you’ve tossed and turned, but most of its functionality is based around its alarm in the morning.
It’ll play music from five different games (Super Mario Odyssey, Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Splatoon 3, Pikmin 4, and Ring Fit Adventure), with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons being added later as free DLC.
Once the alarm goes off Alarmo will gradually increase the intensity, while watching your body with motion sensors and making sound effects as you move, like the sound of collecting coins in Mario when you stretch but don’t actually get up.
Getting out of bed will reward you with a triumphal bit of music, as images from the games and animated characters on the clock celebrate.
We’re not sure associating the joyful sounds and music of Nintendo games with the horrors of having to get up in the morning is all that sensible an idea, but well… there it is anyway.
Alarmo is available from today in the US and from the My Nintendo story later this week in the UK – although until mid-January it’ll only be possible to buy it if you’re a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber.
It costs $99.99 in the US, which converts to £76 here. Although it’s more likely to have a price closer to £100 once you take into account the difference in taxes.
There’s a whole Q&A about Alarmo on Nintendo’s website, where they explain how they want it to ‘establish a new convention for waking up.’
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