Nintendo Jumps Into Virtual Reality With Nintendo Labo VR Kits

Nintendo is stepping into the world of virtual reality through its Nintendo Labo kits. Today, the company announced the Nintendo Labo: VR Kit, a cardboard mounted VR system that works with existing Switch consoles.

Like Google Cardboard VR, Nintendo's Labo VR Kits work by inserting your Switch screen into a cardboard VR headset. Only Nintendo being Nintendo, the company opted to created various unique VR mounts in the shape of either different animals, a camera, and even a rocket launcher.

Nintendo hasn't released a trailer for any of its VR games but has revealed six different VR cardboard mounts. There is the VR Goggles, VR Blaster, VR Camera, VR Elephant, VR Bird, and VR Wind Pedal.

There are several ways players can purchase the various VR Labo kits. The first is the VR Starter Set which includes the cardboard parts necessary to build the goggles and blaster. This will retail for $39.99, and players can purchase two expansion sets for the additional cardboard parts. Expansion Set 1 includes the elephant and camera, and Expansion Set 2 includes the Wind Pedal and bird.

There's also the Labo VR Kit which will retailer for $79.99 and include all six Toy-Con cardboard parts. Unfortunately, there's no savings for buying the Labo VR Kit as buying them all at once, or through the expansions will both cost around $80. With the expansions though, players can choose which cardboard mounts they want.

As with the last Labo kits, the VR sets will come with Toy-Con Garage mode so players can program their own basic Labo programs to work with the VR sets. This should lead to some interesting creations that we'll hopefully see when the sets are released.

There were rumors that Nintendo was exploring VR for the Switch since last year when a dataminer discovered a VR setting in Nintendo's hardware. Since then, many have suggest Nintendo could utilize the existing Nintendo Switch screen to enable VR, like various mobile phone VR accessories. And lo, Nintendo has done just that with Labo VR.

Nintendo Labo: VR Kit goes on sale on April 12. Check out our Nintendo Labo guide for pricing information on Nintendo's previous cardboard sets.