Nintendo Switch's Joy-Cons have weird new motion controls and super-precise rumble

If you thought the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons were just regular ol' controller attachments, you severely underestimate Nintendo's love of cool/weird hardware. How about feeling individual ice cubes rattling around, or playing rock paper scissors by holding your hand out to the side of the controller? Yeah.

That ice cube trick is made possible by "HD rumble", and Nintendo claims it will let you feel the difference between one ice cube rattling around in a cup versus three, and even feel the sensation of the glass filling with water. But that's not the strangest thing it can do. The right joy con has a 'motion IR camera' that lets it track the position and movement of nearby objects - like your hand. It can tell what kind of gestures you're making as well as how far you are from the controller.

Each controller also includes the usual gyro sensors for more standard motion controls. And this is a Nintendo product, after all, so you can attach a strap to keep from flinging it into your television.

In more mundane news, the mysterious square button on the left Joy-Con is a "Capture" button which you can use to capture screenshots in-game (like the Share button on a PS4 controller). And the inside "rails", where the controllers attach to the Switch console, have cute little hidden shoulder buttons inside. So small!

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.