The industry veteran has recently moved to Blizzard as their new Marketing Director for ANZ. MORE

This year's PAX Aus will be held from Ocotber 27 to 29 with tickets going on sale on March 14. Single day passes will cost $65 per day with 3-day passes $165. MORE

There are three distinct ways to play the Nintendo Switch. Last week we looked at TV Mode — the traditional method of play. This week we'll tackle Tabletop Mode.

The tricky part of Nintendo Switch's Tabletop mode isn't its ability to pop out a kickstand and sit nicely on a flat surface. That's commonplace now. The tricky part is the Joy-Con controllers, and their ability to transform the way you look at the console.

They function like a traditional controller in many cases, featuring four buttons (in Nintendo's traditional A B X Y format, of course), directional buttons, triggers, shoulder buttons and thumbsticks. But when separated from one another they become something different entirely — two unique entities that you can use to play multiplayer games on. Holding just the left or just the right part feels odd at first — each fits inside my palm from end to end, and they weigh close to nothing at all. But after a few tense, competitive rounds of Mario Kart they reveal their true value — they're well-built, well-engineered pieces of kit. I'm sure I'm not the only person that sub-consciously twists and bends controllers while cornering or trying to overtake someone, and the Joy-Con's handled it beautifully. That's not too surprising — no console maker would create devices that couldn't handle a bit of twisting — but it's unexpected from such a small, light piece of gear.

Also unexpected, while we're digressing and talking about the Joy-Con controllers, was how impressive HD Rumble was. It's like this year's VR — the sort of thing you just don't get until you've experienced it. It just sounds like a better Rumble feature initially, but in practice there's a distinctive, tactile sensation driving it. It will be extremely interesting to see how it's put to work.

In their launch trailer a man sat upon an airplane playing Zelda in Handheld mode, but my dream sees me challenging the passenger next to me to some Ultra Street Fighter 2, or smashing my nephew at Mario Kart 8 while my wife drives on a road trip. And when I feel like playing on my own, I can do that with ease as well. It's as if the engineers at Nintendo heard the phrase 'All-in-One Entertainment Platform' and interpreted it in an entirely different way to the other console makers. Like they're trying to make  Nintendo entertainment system that does everything.

One other thing of note — the Switch charges while away from the Dock using USB-C, which is quickly becoming the new normal for phones and other electronic devices. The fully reversible plug means you can plug the Switch into a power plug, but you can also charge it off a usb charge pack (the sort you probably bought for Pokemon Go).

It's this twist on the traditional console which intrigues me the most with the Switch — it's doing things we're used to from decades of home consoles, but it's doing them in quirky, odd ways. The controllers are just like typical controllers, until you split them up into more controllers. The console is a home system until it's not, and you can play it out and about. Nintendo is taking what we already know and they're taking it in a different direction. Tabletop Mode is just one of the ways they're doing that. Next week we'll jump in to look at the third way they're changing things up — Handheld mode.

Let’s take a trip back to the 29th of April 2016, a day where the Aussie video games industry was buzzing. The Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications released its final report into the future of Australia’s video game development industry, which was cleverly titled: “Game on: more than playing around”.

This was it, we all thought. This was the long-awaited recognition from government that the industry needed. Film, television and music have all long benefited from various levels of government support, from tax concessions to direct funding. Games development, on the other hand, was (and is) always treated poorly. But not this time! We now have a Senate report saying otherwise, with unanimous agreement from Labor, Liberal and the Greens (which is rare). Things will change soon! Well, at least that’s what we first believed.

The Committee praised the Australian games development industry. It recognised that Australia had a “proud record of successful video game development”. It believed that an industry as innovative, skilful, technology-focused and creative as ours needed to be embraced. This was followed by eight recommendations, all around getting the Australian Government to support the local industry. From the recommendation to reinstate a funding scheme based on the axed Australian Interactive Games Fund, to the one to introduce a refundable tax offset for expenditure in games development, things were looking promising.

But now, here we are in February 2017. It’s been almost 300 days since the Committee released its report and the government has yet to respond. 300 days!

This is significant. Due to a Senate resolution in 1973, the Australian Government has been required to respond to Senate committee reports within three months of tabling. This means we should have seen a response to the games development report by 29 July 2016, or 91 days after its release. This did not happen. In October 2016, we were told that a “whole-of-Government response” was being developed, but we have not heard anything else since then.

Surely we are due to see something soon, right? Well, not exactly. There are over 150 other committee reports that also have not received a final response from government, some reaching as far back as 2002 (no, I’m not kidding), so we cannot be sure that this report will be treated any differently. I mean, judging by the long history of our Government failing to support games development, it is hard to believe that anything will change.

So, where do we go from here? What more can the Aussie games industry do to get the government to support developers? Believe it or not, there is still a lot. Gamers are some of the most passionate and determined people out there. We just need to keep doing what we do best – talk about the awesome industry that is video games. Keep pushing the government in any way possible (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to help the development industry. Lobby Members of Parliament, at both State and Federal levels. Remind them that games development is a significant export opportunity for Australia, since over 80% of sales revenue comes from overseas (as indicated by IGEA’s survey of 63 Australian development studios, which generated over $114 million in revenue in 2015-16).

A big part of my job at the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) is doing just this. We represent the Australian games industry on issues such as these and we constantly engage with government to ensure they treat us fairly. IGEA played a big role in the Senate’s inquiry and to this day we are taking every opportunity to get the committee report back onto the government’s radar. Hopefully all our efforts will lead to something in 2017. And with the help of Aussie gamers, I am sure we can do it.