Nintendo talks about how it made GameChat on Switch 2
Posted on October 10, 2026 by Brian(@NE_Brian)
in News, Switch 2
In a new developer post, we’ve learned about how Nintendo went about making the GameChat feature for Switch 2.
GameChat was something that was promoted as a prominent feature since the console’s reveal. With it, up to twelve people can voice chat. Up to four friends can share their screen and video chat is supported as well.
Nintendo realized right away that it would need more than just voice chat since “no one comments on the game being played, and the game itself gets left behind.” That led to the inclusion of video calls through a “painstaking process of testing”.
Another interesting part of the piece was Nintendo discussing a test with first-time users. They only used voice calls since they were overwhelmed by all of the different features, so the team “gradually reduced the number of main buttons and repeatedly let first-time users try it out.” After this, Nintendo decided to have just three buttons, which were for the microphone, game sharing screen, and camera.
GameChat is a feature included in the Nintendo Switch 2 that allows you to chat with friends while playing games. As the product manager for this feature, I was responsible for reviewing the specifications and adjusting the schedule to deliver a better experience to our customers.
Playing games with friends in the same place can spark conversations and laughter, and encourage various forms of communication, such as giving each other advice while looking at the screen. I personally have fond memories of such experiences.
Even with today’s changing lifestyles, we believe the value of enjoying communication with others while playing games remains unchanged. In developing the GameChat feature for Nintendo Switch 2, we challenged ourselves to recreate this “fun of gathering with friends and playing games” online.
Find the elements that create enjoyment
To begin with, we started by playing games while using voice chat to explore what makes online gaming feel like playing with friends in person. What we quickly realized was that while voice chat is fun, no one comments on the game being played, and the game itself gets left behind. This meant that voice chat alone would suffice, but it felt vastly different from playing games together in the same place, and we hit a wall early in the development process.
So we tried incorporating video calls, adding and removing elements as we went, and experimented with chatting while playing games every day to find the sweet spot that made it feel like we were all gathered in the same place to play. Through this painstaking process of testing, we discovered that being able to see and hear the same things, in other words, “being able to share the game screen with the other person,” was a major factor influencing the overall experience.
For example, the involuntary shouts you make when you’re defeated by an enemy, or the excitement you feel when you clear a stage, are all possible because you’re sharing what’s happening in real time. On the other hand, if you don’t really understand what the other person is doing or can’t read their reactions, it becomes harder to create that “feeling of being in the same place,” even if you’re able to communicate.
Through these experiments, we narrowed down the core of the experience to “being able to converse,” “seeing the same thing,” and “understanding the other person’s reactions,” and then translated these into specific functions such as “voice chat,” “game screen sharing,” and “video chat.”
When we let people in the company try out the prototype, even those who don’t usually use chat tools started smiling and getting excited, and they began discussing strategies while looking at each other’s game screens. The scenes we had hoped to recreate naturally began to emerge. When we witnessed this, we had a strong feeling that “we can create the experience of gathering with friends and playing games online.”
Change “It looks difficult” to “I think I could use this too”
We found the core of the experience, but we couldn’t convey the fun unless our customers actually used the features. Therefore, we placed particular importance on making it easy for any customer to understand and operate. Our goal is for it to be a standard feature on the Nintendo Switch 2, and to be used even by customers who don’t normally use chat tools.However, simply providing the core features of the user experience isn’t enough; without features commonly found in chat tools, we couldn’t deliver a truly satisfying chat experience to our customers. So, we started by creating a UI with the features we thought were necessary. It worked fine among the developers, so we thought, “This will do!” However, one day, when we held a session to let first-time users try it out, we were crushed. The first-time users didn’t use the game screen sharing or video chat features that we thought were the core of the experience; they only used voice calls. When we asked why, they said, “There were so many features, it seemed complicated, so we didn’t use them.” So, we gradually reduced the number of main buttons and repeatedly let first-time users try it out. After much trial and error, we decided to narrow down the main buttons to just three: “microphone,” “game screen sharing,” and “camera,” which are the core of the experience. We thought we had created it with the customer experience in mind, but we realized that if we didn’t narrow down the number of features this much, it would feel too difficult for first-time users.
We were very particular about the placement of the main functions we decided to include. The first one we decided on was the microphone.
When we imagined how customers would actually use the device, there would be situations where they would want to mute it immediately depending on their surroundings, such as “What if a family member suddenly speaks to me?”, so we made it so that the cursor would be initially placed on it when the menu is opened, allowing it to be used with minimal operation. We had actually seen how confusing it was when this button was difficult to find, so we prioritized it above all other functions.
The remaining two functions are placed to the left and right of the microphone for easy access, making them easily reachable by anyone. While other functions are certainly necessary, we prioritized them and created a clear distinction by placing only the bare minimum of buttons.
All that hard work paid off, and towards the end of development, even people who were using GameChat for the first time happily told us, “It was easy to use, and it reminded me of the feeling of playing together at a friend’s house.” At that moment, we truly felt that we were finally delivering the experience we had been aiming for, and we mentally pumped our fists in the air. We believe we were able to change the impression that it was “difficult” to “something I could use too.”
Nintendo previously discussed the origins of GameChat and revealed that it started working on Switch 2 features in 2020. We have more on that here.
