FCC Highlights Nintendo Switch Controller Announcement This Week

Nintendo will unveil some sort of new Switch controller this week, a U.S. government listing has suggested.

Earlier this month, Nintendo’s request for a confidentiality agreement was submitted and listed on the FCC website, for an item described simply as “game controller.”

Initial documents listed on the website suggested that all photos of the undisclosed controller, its manual, block diagram and schematics would be kept secret for up to six months.

However, on Tuesday, new documents emerged on the FCC’s website indicating that “short-term confidential” information related to the device, such as pictures and diagrams, will be made available this Friday, September 24.

If this is correct, it suggests that Nintendo will likely announce the mysterious device before images of it are released by the US government body on Friday.

The FCC website reveal dates could potentially corroborate claims that a new Nintendo Direct is being released this month.

Nintendo previously requested confidentiality when submitting new controller designs to the FCC. He did the same in August 2019 with his design for Switch’s wireless SNES controller, which was released to coincide with the addition of SNES games to the Switch Online service in September 2019.

However, this claim was supported by a diagram of the shape of the controller showing where the FCC certification label should go, which clearly indicated that the device was an SNES controller.

For this new controller, a similar diagram has been added, but it just shows two rectangles with no discernible details.

However, it was noted that the shape and location of the labels would roughly match the design of a Nintendo 64 controller:

Games released for Nintendo’s two previous home consoles, NES and Super NES, are already available on its Switch Online service, along with compatible controllers.

However, sources recently told VGC’s network partner Nintendo Life that Game Boy and Game Boy Color games will likely be added “very soon” to Switch Online.

Eurogamer later reported that its own sources could corroborate this claim and that other systems could be in the works for Switch Online as well.

The new controller file has the model name HAC-043, which confirms it as a Switch device, as all previous Switch hardware used the HAC prefix.

For example, HAC-001 is the Switch console itself, HAC-022 is the Ring-Con for Ring Fit Adventure, and HAC-042 is the wireless SNES controller released through My Nintendo for the Switch Online SNES library.

The only other information available for the device at this time is a radio test report, which tests the security of the controller’s wireless signals. This test shows that the controller was plugged into HAC-002, Nintendo’s power adapter, for testing, which implies that the controller has a USB-C port.

Nintendo discussed expanding the Switch Online library with other platforms as early as 2019, 12 months after its launch.

At a shareholders’ meeting in 2019, Chairman Shuntaro Furukawa was specifically asked if the company plans to re-release Nintendo 64 and GameCube software.

“At this location we cannot give any new information on future classic hardware among others, but we are thinking of providing an extension of the online service that currently provides Famicom [NES] software, as well as other methods of delivering it, ”he said.

“We also recognize that there are opinions that want to play past titles.”

In the same year, dataminer OatmealDome discovered that the NES Switch Online app contained references to four emulators – Kachikachi, Canoe, Hiyoko and Comte.

Kachikachi and Canoe were the emulators used for the NES Mini and SNES Mini consoles, and then were reused for the Switch Online libraries for those systems. The other two are currently unknown.