Random: Kit And Krysta Pull Back The Curtain On Nintendo’s “Controversial” Switch Teaser Photo

Ever since the announcement that Nintendo would reveal its Switch successor at some point “this fiscal year”, our minds have been drifting to what such a big announcement could possibly entail. Because, let’s not forget, the OG Switch reveal kicked off with a strange photo of Mario peeking around a curtain — something former Nintendo employees Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang were keen to unpack on the latest episode of their podcast (thanks for the heads up, Nintendo Everything).

According to the pair’s answer, the photo was “very controversial”, with Nintendo worrying the image wouldn’t adequately manage people’s expectations. According to Kit, “You always need more assets than you think you do” with a big announcement like a console reveal, but Nintendo didn’t have anything fitting for this occasion so had to turn to a “last-second” photoshoot.

We’ve timestamped the above podcast video with Kit and Krysta’s answer, but you can also find it in writing below:

Krysta: This was very controversial. The person that had this idea was the former head of social, not [Kit]. This person commissioned a photoshoot for the Mario costume character in the office — they basically staged the Mario costume character going behind the curtain and doing the thing. And it caused some concern actually, because, of course, Nintendo doesn’t want to not manage people’s expectations and this was too much in the zone of speculation (‘what could it be?’), [it was] too much of a tease for something as big as a console reveal. So it didn’t go over too well. Then, of course, it got memed into oblivion and people were kind of upset about it, honestly.

Kit: Well here’s the thing with these big beats and moments like this: you always need more assets than you think you do. And in this case, there was clearly no asset to pair with this news and nobody wants to put out a tweet that has no image with it, so it’s like ‘what can we do?’. There’s always some spreadsheet that’s like, ‘here’s every single asset we need, every single sizing, every single use,’ and I think in that case they must have just missed out, because why else otherwise would they be taking a last-second picture of Mario in the shower, you know? ‘Please, give me the asset to use. Do you have it? Please give it to me, otherwise I’m going to do this.’ They’ll be ready next time.

Krysta: People were upset because they didn’t use an official thing and they took a photo. I’m not saying that they did anything wrong.

Kit: Again, they will be on top of this, this time. It won’t happen again.

As for what, exactly, Nintendo has up its sleeve for the ‘Switch 2’ announcement, your guess is as good as ours. We’d be very surprised if it isn’t something a little more official looking — a red Direct-style announcement screen, we’d think — but it would be hilarious to see peeking Mario make a return.

Keep those eyes peeled over the coming months.