Nintendo Switch interview: How perhaps the most important and riskiest console ever made came to be released

Halfway through talking to two of Nintendo's most high-powered executives, one of them pulls a playing card from his pocket. It's a strangely low-tech demonstration – especially given that they are here to talk about the Nintendo Switch, perhaps the company's most important console ever made. But that card makes beautiful sense for at least two reasons. The first: that Nintendo actually started out as a business making handmade playing cards in 1889, and the Switch is a conscious attempt to reconnect with some of the companies long and celebrated history. But more importantly it is a way of understanding the very essence of what the Switch is about, or at least how Nintendo conceives of it – it's best compared not with the PlayStation or Xbox's run of blockbuster gaming experiences, but with the fun, social thrill of a game of poker.