Nintendo has been rumored to be working on a bigger Switch for a while now, which reportedly could show up later in 2021. But YouTuber Michael Pick isn’t waiting around for a new model from Nintendo — he’s gone and built his own bigger Switch.
Much bigger, as it turns out: almost six feet wide, compared to the regular Switch’s 9.4-inch size.
“I really like the Nintendo Switch. It’s small, it’s portable — but it’s really easy to lose. And for me, that was a problem. So, I decided to fix that by making something that was just a little bit larger,” Pick said. That reads as a bit of an understatement when comparing Pick’s supersized model (which he says is the world’s largest) to the original.
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The gigantic version of the Switch is less a portable console and more of a fancy wooden frame for a 4K TV screen, with 3D-printed buttons and an actual (regular-sized) Switch hidden inside. To make the buttons work, a smaller Joy-Con controller is stowed inside with several servo motors that translate the presses on the big buttons to the actual hardware on the inside. The joysticks are even simpler: just massive, 3D-printed joysticks centered with rubber bands on top of the smaller Joy-Con joysticks.
Of course, the massive custom Switch does lose out on some of the regular Switch’s portability: at 65 pounds, it’s not something that you’ll be able to carry around easily. And if one wanted to quibble, Pick’s Switch isn’t technically fully functional, lacking both a touchscreen and removable Joy-Con controllers (making it more of a giant Switch Lite in practice than a giant standard Switch.)
Still, the lack of portability shouldn’t be too much of a problem, given that Pick is donating the custom console to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
