Nintendo Switch 2 mouse controls shown off in latest clip makes me wonder why anyone would use it on the home screen

Okay, for strategy games like Civilization or for shooters like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, I can kind of get behind the idea of the Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con mouse controls. However, the Nintendo Switch 2, like the original Switch, feels designed with a very minimalist approach in mind, and the mouse controls not only look awkward to use but seem like they would be worse than just using the buttons.

As spotted by X account @Genki_JPN, Nintendo has recently put out a video showing how to use the Nintendo Switch 2’s built-in mouse controls on the Home menu.

This was announced in an update to Nintendo Today, the Nintendo mobile app that comes with a Nintendo calendar and the latest Nintendo news. It seems pretty intuitive. You simply place the Joy-Con flat on a surface and move it.

You can access the original clip for yourself by downloading the Nintendo Today app and scrolling to May 11 until you see a post called “Mouse Controls on the HOME Menu.” However, two things hit me once I did so. The first is that this video doesn’t show off the mouse controls well. The cursor on screen looks oddly smooth, and it appears to be either lightly laggy or out of sync.

At about nine seconds into the clip below (set playback speed to 0.25), you can see the mouse being moved from the ‘how to use mouse controls’ tab to ‘next’, and there is a noticeable moment where the mouse moves after the user lets go. This same smoothing issue isn’t present in some other parts of the video, leading me to believe it could be a recording or production error, but it didn’t get the best reaction from the PC Gamer office.

However, even if working properly, I’m not particularly sold on the use case of the mouse here in the first place. Nintendo’s UI is pretty minimalistic, with only a handful of icons on each screen. This means it’s hard to believe a mouse would be quicker or more efficient than some good ol’ buttons.

This isn’t to say mouse controls shouldn’t work in the Home menu, of course. If you are getting ready to play from the comfort of your couch (with the required table to provide the surface area needed for the mouse mode), you probably don’t want to change up your posture and rely entirely on button controls.

However, showing off the mouse controls in a pretty unconvincing manner feels like a bit of a strange choice on Nintendo’s behalf, especially when we’ve received mere seconds of mouse footage prior. Maybe this meeting from Nintendo could have just been an email.