Nintendo Switch VR: New Labo kit allows console to get virtual reality with cardboard headset

Company was one of the pioneers of VR gaming – but has not been involved with it for 20 years

(Nintendo)

Nintendo has launched a virtual reality kit for the Switch – and it is made out of cardboard.

The new Labo releases is part of a series of cardboard kits, which include other products such as a cardboard kit that turns its wearer into a robot.

Nintendo was one of the pioneers of VR in gaming: its Virtual Boy, launched in 1995, was pioneering but roundly derided by critics and shut down four years later amid commercial failure. It has not entered the market again in the 20 years since, but rumours have spread since before the Switch was even released that it could be perfect for virtual reality, if its display was slotted into a headset.

Now that headset has arrived, in the form of the Labo cardboard kit. Nintendo described the kit as "basic" and it is far from the high technology of rivals like PlayStation VR, but it is also considerably cheaper.

It is in essence a folded piece of cardboard into which the Switch's display can be slotted, allowing it to become a screen. Using sensors and other tools, that headset will then track the wearer's head movements and allow them to join VR experiences.

The VR kit includes not just the cardboard headset but a range of games that can be played using it. Six new kinds of controller can be built in total, then combined, allowing for experiences like shooting alien invaders using a blaster or taking photographs of an in-game ocean with a cardboard camera.

The new kit will arrive on 12 April and cost roughly $80 or probably similar in pounds or euros. Another set includes a more limited set of projects for half the price, which can be extended by buying the extra sets separately afterwards.

Nintendo said the VR kit had been built to allow people to pass the creations around the room and make them social. It is held up to the head, for instance, in a way more similar to Google Cardboard than more involved headsets.