Gaming

PS5 Nintendo fusion fan render reveals the dream collab you'll never see

That colorway...

by Jen Glennon

Something’s gotta compete with Xbox Game Pass, right? A fan-made render depicting a colorful mashup of the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch consoles has resurfaced online, and it’s truly the stuff that nerdish dreams are made of.

First shared via TikTok by Kashama (@imkashama) in November 2020 and recently recirculated by a YouTube admirer, this render depicts a collaboration that will almost certainly never happen in real life, but is awfully fun to think about. Imagine a world where you could play a handheld version of The Last of Us Part II on the go, or experience all the nifty features of the DualSense controller during a heated bout of Mario Kart 8. That world only exists within this 12-second video. Soak it in.

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The controller’s form factor borrows heavily from Sony’s DualSense. But in lieu of showing off the PS5’s haptic feedback and 3D audio, Kashama’s riff on the consoles adds a few new features, like an expanding grip and a sliding, high-resolution touch-screen display in place of the regular old touchpad. The controller colorway takes a cue from the iconic turquoise and apple red of the Switch Joy-Cons, while also gesturing toward the era of translucent candy-colored N64 consoles in the late 90s.

It’s easy to miss on a single viewing, but in the rear of the shot, you can see two vertically oriented PS5 consoles, both bearing bold red-and-blue Nintendo coloring to match the controller. It’s quite a dramatic difference from the spare look of Sony’s standard-issue PS5.

Kashama’s amassed 1.2 million followers on TikTok for the PS5 Nintendo fusion and similar renders of dream-fodder console ideas and collabs between major electronics brands. The PS5/Switch video has been viewed more than 10 million times on the platform, but it’s not even Kashama’s most popular gaming post. That honor belongs to a rendition of an Xbox handheld, with a folding format that evokes a beefier Nintendo DS, with more than 35 million views. His most recent gaming upload, from early April, features a re-imagined, retro-futuristic rendition of Nintendo’s Game Boy, with an irregularly shaped full-face display reminiscent of the form-factor of the Game Boy Advance.

While this fantasy collab between Sony and Nintendo isn’t something gamers can expect to see soon — or probably ever — recent months have brought us a number of remarkable team-ups, like Microsoft buying Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax and Xbox securing the rights to offer MLB The Show 21 on Game Pass on launch day. So never say never.