Covert Nintendo Switch dock can be taken anywhere, smashes Kickstarter goal

By Gabe Gurwin August 8, 2019

The Nintendo Switch is a brilliant hybrid console, and this is largely in thanks to its ability to be used either as a handheld system or a traditional system. Connecting it to a television requires a dock, and Nintendo’s own design is unwieldy and bulky. The Genki Covert Dock aims to eliminate this issue by combining the dock’s functionality with a charger in a tiny single device.

Just launched on Kickstarter — the campaign destroyed its original $50,000 goal in less than one hour — the Genki Covert Dock is created by Human Things, and it includes an HDMI port, foldable prongs, and USB 3.1 and USB-C ports for charging and accessories. The Nintendo Switch is not placed directly on the device, but rather connects with a USB-C cable, and an HDMI cable goes from the Genki Covert Dock to the television. Its internals are powered by Gallium Nitride, which the creators said will reduce heat, and it can also charge everything from iPhones to Microsoft Surface tablets.

The Genki Covert Dock is less than 10 percent the size of Nintendo’s original design, and it’s even smaller than the standard Switch charger. The external design has even been modeled after the Switch Pro Controller, so it will fit in perfectly with your other Switch accessories.

Speaking of accessories, the Genki Covert Dock’s USB 3.1 port isn’t just for charging, but also for data — you can connect wired controllers to it just like you would on the original dock. Unlock some similar dock alternatives, Human Things said the Genki Covert Dock is built to handle how the Switch uses power, which should eliminate the chance of it damaging your system. This has been a problem on previous alternatives, with the M92T36 chip inside apparently to blame.

At $49 during its initial Kickstarter special, the Genki Covert Dock is also cheaper than Nintendo’s own dock. As usual, you should be aware of the pitfalls of crowdfunding before committing any cash to this product.

It’s planned to reach global delivery by this December, and for an extra $10, you can receive a global power adapter. If you plan on using it outside of North America, you will likely need one for it to be compatible with outlets.

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Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years.
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward.
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To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
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Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened.