Nintendo announces new game hardware: an alarm clock!

Nintendo has a new piece of game hardware coming in 2024. It’s not the Switch 2, it’s the Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo, a new motion-sensing alarm clock that will rouse you from sleep with the sounds of video games like Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and more.

The $99.99 alarm clock includes 35 wake-up “scenes” from Nintendo Switch games. Users will “experience immersive sounds and music’” from those scenes, which are styled to match Nintendo’s franchises. Alarmo will also track users’ sleep and motion; Records will keep track of how much you move around, similar to the Pokémon Go Plus Plus sleep tracker that Nintendo released for Pokémon Go/Pokémon Sleep (and the long-promised, but seemingly abandoned QOL project).

Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo will feature various alarm settings, Nintendo said in a news release. The clock’s Steady Mode features an alarm that will gradually get more intense the longer you stay in bed. Gentle Mode offers “a more consistent intensity level.” And Button Mode is a classic snooze button mode, where you’ve gotta smack Alarmo to shut it up. Nintendo’s new interactive, motion-sensing alarm clock also features “sleepy sounds” — soothing music that will hopefully lull you to sleep at night.

Alarmo is available to purchase directly from Nintendo, but only for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. Nintendo will sell the Alarmo at retail starting in early 2025, the company said.

Nintendo first announced plans to release a sleep-monitoring device back in 2014. The company had much bigger plans for its “quality of life” health device then: It hoped to read not just a user’s movement via motion sensors, but their heart rate, respiration, and fatigue too, and connect that data to Nintendo’s dedicated video game devices. Then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in 2014 that the company planned to expand its business into the health market, with the hopes that it can improve “quality of life through entertainment.” But with the success of the Switch, Nintendo backburnered its QOL device plans… until now.

For more on the development of the Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo, there’s a new Ask the Developer Q&A on Nintendo’s website.