Nintendo may be revealing a new Switch controller in the near future

Nintendo has always been very cagey about its unannounced plans. We hardly ever know for sure what’s going to be coming out of the publisher before it’s announced, and often it’s not quite what we expected. However, a recently obtained document from a confidentiality agreement with the FCC that Nintendo is developing and may be reveling a new Switch controller at some point from six months after the filing of the document.

A page from the confidentiality filing with the FCC was recently obtained by Video Games Chronicle. It’s not highly in-depth, but does have some fairly reliable information on it. For one, it lists a controller in development with the model number “HAC-043.” The HAC prefix is one that pretty much all Nintendo Switch hardware has used since the console’s launch. HAC-001 denotes the Switch console itself. The right and left Gray Joy-Cons have the model numbers HAC-015 and HAC-016 respectively. This would suggest that HAC-043 is also a controller specifically made to be used with the Nintendo Switch.

It's unclear exactly what form the new Nintendo controller will take on, but the model number suggests it's specifically a peripheral for the Nintendo Switch.

We don’t know what kind of controller the model in the confidentiality listing will be at this time. Diagrams of the model just show two non-descript rectangles. However, it’s not the first time Nintendo has filed such an agreement with the FCC. When it was developing the wireless SNES controller that would eventually launch, Nintendo also filed a similar agreement with the FCC. That SNES wireless controller would eventually launch in 2019, though it’s worth mentioning that the filing for that controller had diagrams that made it pretty clear it was an SNES controller.

Nintendo is about to launch the Switch OLED model pretty soon. It’s possible the new controller is related to it. However, it’s also possible it’s something altogether different with Nintendo almost assuredly getting ready to bring a Game Boy/Game Boy Color library to Nintendo Switch Online. Stay tuned as we follow this story for further updates, details, and a possible reveal of the new controller.