The New New
Nintendo’s New Games Are Miserable for People With Disabilities
Innovation has its drawbacks
It’s an unspoken downside of innovation: Sometimes a push into new technology can leave certain people behind. Ideas like virtual reality, touchscreens, and 3D television might promise new experiences for most of us. But for people with disabilities, they can mean motion sickness, muscle pain, or worse.
This innovation-disability gap is a major problem in video games, and one company is doing a particularly bad job dealing with it. While Nintendo rides high on the success of its new Switch console, people with disabilities struggle to enjoy the company’s games. These gamers complain of trouble navigating hits like Super Mario Odyssey — if they can play the games at all — because they’re packed with fiddly interactions requiring a flick of the wrist or sensitivity to a controller’s vibrations. Nintendo didn’t reply to a request for comment before deadline.
These problems with the Switch have actually plagued the company’s products for years. The company’s Wii console, launched way back in 2006, also relied on innovative motion controls that shut some people out of the system — ironic, because the Wii was supposedly designed around accessibility.
