The C button?

[ChronoCrossfangirl2002]

After looking a bit closer: it is definitely the capture button from switch 1 they probably put the c on there
to better communicate what the button is as the one on switch 1 had nothing on it

edit: it was sorta hard to see at first but the regular capture button is still on SW2 along with C and Home....so yeah what even is that button..?

 

[RAHelllord]

Maybe it's intentionally blank not because it's a c-stick in the traditional sense, but is a tiny clicky touchpad similar to the steam deck's?

If the joycons actually support mouse mode now it makes sense they would want to have a form of the mouse mode available on the regular joycon while portable as well, and a tiny touch pad might be "good enough" in their eyes for that purpose.

 

[K3Nv4]

I would've thought it was amiibo related. Sure I don't know anyone that still buys them but maybe some type of scanner detection is underneath it that also acts as a button.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I would've thought it was amiibo related. Sure I don't know anyone that still buys them but maybe some type of scanner detection is underneath it that also acts as a button.

Why would it need to be a button? For that matter, why would it have a C on it?

Maybe it's intentionally blank not because it's a c-stick in the traditional sense, but is a tiny clicky touchpad similar to the steam deck's?

If the joycons actually support mouse mode now it makes sense they would want to have a form of the mouse mode available on the regular joycon while portable as well, and a tiny touch pad might be "good enough" in their eyes for that purpose.

That would make sense, so games that rely on the mouse functionality would still be playable in handheld mode. You could just use the touchscreen, and I assume that's what most games would do, but specifically for camera movement, that wouldn't really work (I mean, the DS and 3DS tried, but it was kind of awful, you wouldn't be able to compete in any sort of competitive shooter if the other players weren't also using the touchscreen, it would be worse than using the right stick)
Taking a page out of Valve's book (with the Steam Controller and Deck), seems like a good idea. As long as they don't get sued. Or maybe it would be good if they got a taste of their own medicine.
It's waaaaay too tiny though. It's probably usable, but doing quick long movements would be impossible without really cranking up the sensitivity, which then makes accurate movements impossible without using the gyro, which is the same problem we have with the right stick already, so it doesn't seem like it actually solves a problem... Might be slightly better than using the right stick though. I'd probably use it in single player games. But really, it needs to be at least bigger than my thumb to be much good. If you use it like you would use an analog stick you're going to move your thumb off the tiny surface and then it won't register anything.
There's one thing that doesn't make sense about that explanation though. Since even a child's thumb is bigger than the button, it would effectively be a single point of sensing. So why does it need to be a square? It seems like a circular touchpoint would be more intuitive to use. It just seems really arbitrary. I guess there doesn't need to be a reason for it to be a square, the capture button is also a square after all. Maybe they just didn't want it to look (and feel) too similar to the home button so people would confuse them. But now they run the risk of people confusing it with the capture button instead. That could be why the C was removed, actually.

 

[RAHelllord]

That would make sense, so games that rely on the mouse functionality would still be playable in handheld mode. You could just use the touchscreen, and I assume that's what most games would do, but specifically for camera movement, that wouldn't really work (I mean, the DS and 3DS tried, but it was kind of awful, you wouldn't be able to compete in any sort of competitive shooter if the other players weren't also using the touchscreen, it would be worse than using the right stick)
Taking a page out of Valve's book (with the Steam Controller and Deck), seems like a good idea. As long as they don't get sued. Or maybe it would be good if they got a taste of their own medicine.
It's waaaaay too tiny though. It's probably usable, but doing quick long movements would be impossible without really cranking up the sensitivity, which then makes accurate movements impossible without using the gyro, which is the same problem we have with the right stick already, so it doesn't seem like it actually solves a problem... Might be slightly better than using the right stick though. I'd probably use it in single player games. But really, it needs to be at least bigger than my thumb to be much good. If you use it like you would use an analog stick you're going to move your thumb off the tiny surface and then it won't register anything.
There's one thing that doesn't make sense about that explanation though. Since even a child's thumb is bigger than the button, it would effectively be a single point of sensing. So why does it need to be a square? It seems like a circular touchpoint would be more intuitive to use. It just seems really arbitrary. I guess there doesn't need to be a reason for it to be a square, the capture button is also a square after all. Maybe they just didn't want it to look (and feel) too similar to the home button so people would confuse them. But now they run the risk of people confusing it with the capture button instead. That could be why the C was removed, actually.

My assumption would be it relies heavily on detecting swipes across the thing and click actions, so for example put your thumb down on the middle of it and swipe off to the right, and that gets sensed. Though depending on the tech it could also not be capacitive touch sensor but one of these ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, or something akin to an optical sensor like you'd find in a mouse. It senses fingerprint and uses how that moves to map the mouse movement.
Both types of those sensors have become very small and cheap. But even just capacitive sensing across the edges and a few zones on top would be enough for swipes, taps, and clicks.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

My assumption would be it relies heavily on detecting swipes across the thing and click actions, so for example put your thumb down on the middle of it and swipe off to the right, and that gets sensed. Though depending on the tech it could also not be capacitive touch sensor but one of these ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, or something akin to an optical sensor like you'd find in a mouse. It senses fingerprint and uses how that moves to map the mouse movement.
Both types of those sensors have become very small and cheap. But even just capacitive sensing across the edges and a few zones on top would be enough for swipes, taps, and clicks.

I'd expect it to work like an optical sensor, those simply detect the changes in texture of whatever surface you are moving it across. Basically, they're low res cameras.
Though, it sure doesn't look like any optical sensor I've ever seen. So I'm not sure what kind of tech it would be using... Perhaps it's the same tech as (some) fingerprint sensors. If you can integrate fingerprint sensors into power buttons, and they are able to sense the texture of your fingerprint, the tech could certainly be applied to sense movement as well, there would need to be some software/firmware trickery going on to use your fingerprint map to calculate movement, but it's not much different from what optical mice are already doing.
If your thumb is covering the whole thing, I don't think a capacitive sensor would work. They can only sense which parts of the sensor are being touched, they don't directly sense movement. The Valve Index controllers have tiny capacitive touchpads, which do technically support left-right movement, but because they're about the same width as your fingertip (but slightly taller) there is basically no sideways movement being registered and even the up-down movement is not very useful, your movements have to be slow and intentional (and light, so only the tip is touching) and basically nothing used them as anything more than pressure sensitive buttons (which is not a feature of the touchpad itself, there's actually a piezo sensor underneath the touchpad for pressure sensitivity, so the touchpads could've just as well been left out)

 

[RAHelllord]

I'd expect it to work like an optical sensor, those simply detect the changes in texture of whatever surface you are moving it across. Basically, they're low res cameras.
Though, it sure doesn't look like any optical sensor I've ever seen. So I'm not sure what kind of tech it would be using... Perhaps it's the same tech as (some) fingerprint sensors. If you can integrate fingerprint sensors into power buttons, and they are able to sense the texture of your fingerprint, the tech could certainly be applied to sense movement as well, there would need to be some software/firmware trickery going on to use your fingerprint map to calculate movement, but it's not much different from what optical mice are already doing.
If your thumb is covering the whole thing, I don't think a capacitive sensor would work. They can only sense which parts of the sensor are being touched, they don't directly sense movement. The Valve Index controllers have tiny capacitive touchpads, which do technically support left-right movement, but because they're about the same width as your fingertip (but slightly taller) there is basically no sideways movement being registered and even the up-down movement is not very useful, your movements have to be slow and intentional (and light, so only the tip is touching) and basically nothing used them as anything more than pressure sensitive buttons (which is not a feature of the touchpad itself, there's actually a piezo sensor underneath the touchpad for pressure sensitivity, so the touchpads could've just as well been left out)

With capacitive I was thinking the entire surface is divided up into something like a 4x4 field of sensors from edge to edge. Depending on how those zones get activated you can calculate in which direction a finger swiped over them. Like for example if the sensors get activated in a wave from right to left that means a finger swiped over it from right to left. And even a 4x4 grid would allow for a fairly decent precision if the timing data is precise enough, though a finer grid would naturally be better.

Though it seems at least one person did in fact manage to write some code that turned the fingerprint sensor on the back of an old LG phone into a bonafide touchpad input, back in 2017:

So yeah, maybe it is really just something like a fingerprint sensor in a phone's power button and some software magic to turn it into a rudimentary touch pad replacement.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

With capacitive I was thinking the entire surface is divided up into something like a 4x4 field of sensors from edge to edge. Depending on how those zones get activated you can calculate in which direction a finger swiped over them. Like for example if the sensors get activated in a wave from right to left that means a finger swiped over it from right to left. And even a 4x4 grid would allow for a fairly decent precision if the timing data is precise enough, though a finer grid would naturally be better.

Though it seems at least one person did in fact manage to write some code that turned the fingerprint sensor on the back of an old LG phone into a bonafide touchpad input, back in 2017:

So yeah, maybe it is really just something like a fingerprint sensor in a phone's power button and some software magic to turn it into a rudimentary touch pad replacement.

They'd all be activated all the time, unless you physically move your finger off the sensor in order to make only some of them be activated, but requiring you to do that would make for a pretty bad experience I think. And 4x4 would be pretty uselessly bad for most things you would want to use a touchpad for, regular touchpads have much more granularity than that.

 

[RAHelllord]

They'd all be activated all the time, unless you physically move your finger off the sensor in order to make only some of them be activated, but requiring you to do that would make for a pretty bad experience I think. And 4x4 would be pretty uselessly bad for most things you would want to use a touchpad for, regular touchpads have much more granularity than that.

Again, swipe actions from one side to the other (flick the camera around 180° or something like that) or putting your finger down and swiping off of it would perfectly work, including timing data to know how fast the swipe was.
And I only used a 4x4 grid as an easy to understand example since it's only 16 tiles. I don't know what the current density is per inch on a touchpad, but I would assume it's far larger than just a 4x4 grid in an area the size of that button.
I believe fingerprint sensors have about 1000 data points on average, which would be about a 32x32 grid.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Again, swipe actions from one side to the other (flick the camera around 180° or something like that) or putting your finger down and swiping off of it would perfectly work, including timing data to know how fast the swipe was.
And I only used a 4x4 grid as an easy to understand example since it's only 16 tiles. I don't know what the current density is per inch on a touchpad, but I would assume it's far larger than just a 4x4 grid in an area the size of that button.
I believe fingerprint sensors have about 1000 data points on average, which would be about a 32x32 grid.

Using the touchpoint to just do what you could do with a regular button anyway doesn't seem like it would improve games, rather it would just make them more tedious like motion controls have a tendency to do when it's forced into situations where it's not required. I would hope that it's capable of a little bit more than just swiping. Swiping makes sense on phones where the touchscreen is the only input device and swiping often ends up being the quickest way to perform an action, but even there, there's positional tracking to the swipes, which you wouldn't even have with this, so even something like Fruit Ninja would be too complex for this input method.
Nintendo isn't usually one to do something at all if they can't do it right, so they probably wouldn't go with the most basic ass way to make their new gimmick work when there are better ways (I do realize that the mouse functionality is probably their new gimmick, but this is probably directly tied into that as a handheld-usable alternative so it has to be capable of somewhat the same functionality)

 

[K3Nv4]

Why would it need to be a button? For that matter, why would it have a C on it?

That would make sense, so games that rely on the mouse functionality would still be playable in handheld mode. You could just use the touchscreen, and I assume that's what most games would do, but specifically for camera movement, that wouldn't really work (I mean, the DS and 3DS tried, but it was kind of awful, you wouldn't be able to compete in any sort of competitive shooter if the other players weren't also using the touchscreen, it would be worse than using the right stick)
Taking a page out of Valve's book (with the Steam Controller and Deck), seems like a good idea. As long as they don't get sued. Or maybe it would be good if they got a taste of their own medicine.
It's waaaaay too tiny though. It's probably usable, but doing quick long movements would be impossible without really cranking up the sensitivity, which then makes accurate movements impossible without using the gyro, which is the same problem we have with the right stick already, so it doesn't seem like it actually solves a problem... Might be slightly better than using the right stick though. I'd probably use it in single player games. But really, it needs to be at least bigger than my thumb to be much good. If you use it like you would use an analog stick you're going to move your thumb off the tiny surface and then it won't register anything.
There's one thing that doesn't make sense about that explanation though. Since even a child's thumb is bigger than the button, it would effectively be a single point of sensing. So why does it need to be a square? It seems like a circular touchpoint would be more intuitive to use. It just seems really arbitrary. I guess there doesn't need to be a reason for it to be a square, the capture button is also a square after all. Maybe they just didn't want it to look (and feel) too similar to the home button so people would confuse them. But now they run the risk of people confusing it with the capture button instead. That could be why the C was removed, actually.

Innovation less space to take up.

 

[o0nlyScvms]

Most interesting part of Nintendo is that they are continuously with the hardware like controllers and size and shape.

Post automatically merged: Jan 31, 2025

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mods only

 

[FanNintendo]

Maybe relate to Wii's Nunchuck controller it have C button with Z Button

 

[Tur7L3]

Almost everything uses a 5ghz signal these days. And yes, you'd need good signal for the casting to work reliably, obviously.

I don't have wifi 6 and the quest works perfectly fine for me with virtual desktop. My desktop is wired though. The dock also has an Ethernet connection, so ideally it would be plugged into that.

Over there maybe, but 3rd world countries and even well developed and modernized Latin american countries just don't implement these costs in the daily living. Nintendo has a good chunk of people to live up to, 130million-ish, so I don't think they'd base a feature on requiring other services (from other companies, may I add) to function

 

[isoboy]

It's our future entry point to cfw and their inevitable downfall.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Over there maybe, but 3rd world countries and even well developed and modernized Latin american countries just don't implement these costs in the daily living. Nintendo has a good chunk of people to live up to, 130million-ish, so I don't think they'd base a feature on requiring other services (from other companies, may I add) to function

I don't think Nintendo even officially distributes to 3rd world countries or most Latin American countries so they're probably not concerned with that.
It could always use adhoc wifi, probably wouldn't be able to play online but for local play it would be fine. Then the Switch and dock would be on their own channel separate from the main wifi.

 

[DM9]

C - for connect maybe it links to multiple systems or to a TV source which is exactly what the Wii-U did and the Switch is just improving on that. There could also be a new peripheral

C- Camera

C- Chat

C- new A.I companion R.O.B is back

C for Caught Big N did this purposely to narrowed down the mole who's releasing all the info

 

[voy700]

Could this be an optical mouse sensor? I've seen those on several mini laptops and Nintendo loves their gimmicks

 

[wilburie]

I honestly think that this is most likely a capture button again as much as I'd like a cease and desist button.

 

[BigOnYa]

"C" for contact Nintendo and report a family member for using emulation and/ or illegal Roms. For every person you report, you will be rewarded with a gold coin to your NIN account.