The first part of this article is a mea culpa: the other day, I wrote up a set of leaked photos of what people were claiming to be the controller for Nintendo NX. It started with one photo, which looked a little fishy but seemed to echo a patent Nintendo had filed previously. After that, two more photos appeared to lend credibility to the first: they didn't look like photoshops, and they appeared to confirm a different angle on the original device. Turns out they were two largely independent hoaxes: one pretty straightforward, the other quite a bit more involved.
It all started when the "leaker" behind the first photo came forward. The leaker was a French indie game developer named David Im , who posted a walkthrough of his process on Youtube, as well as a set of renders on Deviant Art. Watch below:
So far, so good. The second set of photos, however, is where things get really interesting. Those were, in fact, photos of a real physical object in the world, it's just that that object wasn't made for Nintendo, or made to serve any other purpose besides having a photo taken of it. This was a 3D-Printed fake designed specifically to echo both the patent and the previously leaked photos, and Finnish designer Frank Sandqvist has a video showing how he did it:
The two didn't communicate, though Sandqvist was inspired by the original leak. And that's how we came to be reasonably convinced that this was the design for the next Nintendo controller, or at least the portable version of the NX, or something that seemed real on some level. It's a cautionary tale for Internet journalism, to be sure, as well as a fascinating little example of the video game community hive mind. The 3D printed model is what really puts it over the edge: most of the time, people set to proving hoaxes like this by proving that the image is a photoshop, but making a model lent the second photos an air of legitimacy. It goes to show, as always, not to trust what you see.
And who knows? Nintendo did file that patent after all, and while that doesn't mean it moved forward with the design, it might mean that the company had mocked up a controller like the one from the hoaxes at some point. And if there was ever the thought in their heads that that was a good idea, the Internet reaction to the images would have convinced them otherwise. Or maybe the company had never made anything looking like this, and it's nothing but sound and fury. I've sent some emails to both Im and Sandqvist, so hopefully we can shed some more light on the whole thing.
