"There is no difference in functionality between current products and revised products containing user-replaceable batteries."
So there was nothing "limiting" them from making it already with user-replaceable batteries, they just didn't care enough until EU forced them (like all the smartphone brands). Love EU.
It's not that they didn't care, it's that they did care in the wrong way. A non-replacable battery means people will be more likely to buy a whole new device if (when) the battery fails.
To be clear, all the mentioned Nintendo products are already designed for battery replacement, with well-contained battery units and easy connectors, and the batteries are available and problem-free to replace unlike for a certain fruit company.
The redesign is because the ease of accessing the batteries did not comply with the new rules. The pro controller in particular requires almost complete disassembly to get to the module, and the Switch 2's battery uses double-sided adhesive which is finicky. Joycons can also be a bit finicky to navigate for the uninitiated.
Also, as the device is Japanese, it uses JIS screws rather than Philips, which could surprise some. These are superior for service - Philips screws are specifically designed to strip during assembly to prevent over-torquing - but they do require you to have the right, "exotic" screwdriver. As JIS screwdrivers are compatible with and superior in bite even for Philips screws, it's a good habit to just always use those instead for electronics. iFixit kits and such include them.
I think the more likely explanation is that there was not sufficient market motiviation to include the additional requirement of a user-swappable battery. ie. people care, but they don't care enough or in enough volume for Nintendo to decide it's required.
I celebrate user-swappable batteries and I think I like the battery regulations. I just don't think the Ghost of Iwata is under your bed twirling a Wario moustache while thinking about how to screw you over. The current Switch battery situation is simply a result of user-swappable not being a requirement, among the countless other requirements already in contention.
Disagree. The market will not decide on that, at least for the nintendo product. Your or your kid want the switch and the pokemon and mario and others game, you're buying the switch, you don't switch to something else because the something else allows battery switch.
That's Nintendo's entire business model and the reason why they've been thriving since for ever in gaming and even the bad times where actually positive cash flow wise. They're not losing a single sale because the battery cannot be replaced, unless that sale was far from guaranteed to begin win.
I don't think customers need to be protected from themselves. If they don't like the hardware but buy it anyways because they really like the game, that's a choice. And I feel that when we're dealing with luxury goods, we should give consumers very broad discretion to vote with their money.
I don't think that's it for console manufacturers. They make the majority of their money on game sales, so they want the console itself to be used for as long as possible.
I don't understand why battery failure is a "when". The only batteries I've ever had fail in rechargeable electronic devices were replaceable packs where water got into the compartment. Perhaps I've just gotten lucky?
Batteries are chemical devices and have a finite lifespan. There's enough confounding variables involved that some people get real superstitious about it.
Through a combination of internal and external factors, lithium batteries go through irreversible chemical changes on every charge cycle. Total charge capacity always trends down. Depending on a large number of variables, this might happen quickly or it might happen so slow you might never notice at all. It's all down to how and where the battery is used because temperature is mostly what drives the chemical reactions.
The other thing is that lithium batteries which have been deeply discharged below safe levels are permanently damaged. Just like charge cycle wear, this can be immediately apparent, or something that goes unnoticed forever, but the cell is damaged and will never be the same. Recharging such a battery can cause physical damage inside the cell.
Point is, batteries are chemical cells. They don't last forever because most chemical reactions are not perfectly reversible. Their specific application and environment strongly affects how long they last. But we do know conclusively that when lithium batteries are kept hot and charged and discharged at high current (such as in a handheld gaming device), they degrade faster. Cells which are kept at a stable temperature and low currents (such as headphones) degrade very slowly and can last a long time.
If you look past superstition, there's an entire industry that's been rigorously studying this problem for decades. There's a lot of literature and evidence.
Lithium cells do degrade. How fast they degrade depends on cell quality and environmental factors. It is, unequivocally, a question of when a battery will fail. It might well be a decade or two, but it will fail eventually.
Battery failure is a "when" because batteries have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles. Modern lithium-ion batteries have a life expectancy in the range of 300-600 cycles. So if you've never had such a failure, it probably just means you're not a heavy user of your devices.
I try to keep my cell phones as long as I feasibly can. Every single one I've used for more than 3 years has had its battery fail (as expected for a device that sees such heavy cycling). My current phone is on its 3rd replacement battery.
My PSP, maybe five years ago, had a swollen battery. A friend a couple days ago was complaining that his PS4 controller's battery held no charge at all.
I finally fixed my PS3 and came to discover that the controller batteries are just fine. Good batteries with proper BMS seem to be fine to live a very long life.
It's not really a small percentage of users. All users will have trouble with the battery - eventually. My DS4s ran out of battery life in about three years of usage; I still have one of them that I use wired with my PC, but I absolutely cannot use it wireless. Likewise with my DS5s - one of them barely held a charge 2-3 years in. I'm sure with good battery management you can extend the lifespan to be closer to 5-6 years, like my M1 MBP from 2021 that still has a 9+h battery life (though down from 12 as I remember), but that only keeps them going for a little longer. It's just a fact of how Li-ion batteries work that they will lose their capacity eventually.
E: DS4 = DualShock 4, DS5 = DualSense; these are the standard PlayStation controllers for the PS4 and the PS5 respectively.
But there is at least some argument that smartphones nowadays have some pretty crazy waterproofness that I'm not sure is physically possible with a replaceable battery?
I expect smartphones to look more like the Pro Controller tradeoffs than the joy cons. The issue with replaceable batteries is you need the extra space for the battery structure so unless phones grow they'll have lower capacities. There's also IP ratings, phones have pretty good IP ratings these days often surviving drops in puddles etc where none of these products have any official IP rating to preserve when adding doors etc for replacement batteries.
I'm baffled that we still are thinking that we want thin phones. We have a gigantic camera bump that would be removed if the phone was thicker. Who wants a razor in their pocket, like really?
> So there was nothing "limiting" them from making it already with user-replaceable batteries, they just didn't care enough until EU forced them (like all the smartphone brands). Love EU.
At the very least, the design will be more complicated to accommodate replaceable batteries. That costs money. There's a lot more to "limiting" than functionality.
I'm not too worried. Removable batteries were standard fare for decades before Apple came around and set negative precedent. I don't recall it ever causing issues.
You mean an up-to-5% increase in capacity, and slightly decreased weight, depending on the product?
The truth is that the product with the 16% reduced capacity (Switch 2 Pro controller) is 7g lighter and the one with the 5% increased capacity (Gamecube controller) is 5g heavier.
Besides those two, the general idea is that the capacity is the same with 2-3% extra weight.
Some of these are no change because the existing versions already have pretty user replacement friendly batteries. The JoyCons for example already use the hard sided cells with plugs so I'm not sure what the change will actually amount to. If I had to guess it's maybe to change the glue or method of holding the battery in place to satisfy the ease of replacement requirements.
It's because they're basically already using user replaceable batteries, to the point I'm not sure what the SKU revision will actually do. My best guess is they won't be gluing the battery down any more? Otherwise there's not anything I can see they would need to change.
I wonder if it will feel significant.
I can't remember being limited by the controller battery.
The runtime on a single charge is probably still going to be measured in weeks, and at that scale I feel like it doesn't really matter.
seeing as the product itself already advertises that it's best to not charge it to 100% feel like nothing's being lost here no matter how one tries to spin it
Important to understand non-functional requirements (NFR). They’re saying the core features are the same. They are not saying they’re identical in weight, repair cost, water/dust resistance, battery lifetime, or cost.
Amazes me they don't just sell it like that everywhere because it sounds a lot like a product improvement...
> The revised products will be available on a rolling basis in territories where Nintendo of Europe conducts business, either directly or through a distributor, namely: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
According to their latest fiscal report [0], Europe sales-volume of Switch2 is ~24% of the total global sales volume.
The change surely eats into their margin per device, so they prefer to keep the higher margin for the rest of the world and recalculate their margin for europe.
However interesting: "The Americas" sells 34% of all Switch2 in the world [0].
I wouldn't expect the US to mandate the same changes, but if e.g. Canada or Brazil also demand replaceable batteries, it could push the needle to making it a default HW-feature of Switch2...
The higher margin is mostly coming from assembly costs, right? I can't imagine it comes from the actual cost of the battery being so much higher. I hope that once they start pushing these out and retool factories for them they can sell them more broadly.
From my experience, it comes from costs generated by:
1. Additional R&D-work and QA for the modification
2. New supply-chain deals for lower-volume components
Current sales-volume of Europe is only a quarter of the global volume, so price-negotiation is based on a much lower total volume-forecast.
Even if not, Battery prices today are ~15% higher than in 2024 (I expect Nintendo signed the supply-deal in late 2024), it'll be hard for Nintendo to cancel their existing supply-contract before fulfilling it (!), move to a different component AND get the same/lower price.
--> Better to sell other regions as-is, fulfill the contract and hope for a better climate in a year.
3. Tooling/Assembly (Ramp-Up costs, different processes, QA,...)
4. Re-certification of HW for relevant bodies in that region (Europe is quite lean on this, CE-certification is simple compared to US FTC/FCC)
I can almost hear the conversation with Nintendo of America CEO about covering 1/3 of the cost to get the same SKU and them simply saying "No, we just raised the prices because of component-cost increase, we wait for the HW-refresh in 2H/2027"
I wouldn't be surprised if they plan to unify the SKU again with a premium "Switch 2 OLED", offsetting the additional costs, preserving the margin and having an additional selling-point...
I would prefer the current versions without anything replaceable. I have the Switch bought on day 1 and a Pro Controller which is 9 years old. Yes, the Switch was mostly used docked, but the battery is last thing failing there, it rather has issues with the fan, the screen scratches etc. The controller works perfectly and I charge it once a month. The replaceable battery would only make it less solid.
The biggest Switch issue by far is joystick drift on joycons. I've replaced 3 on my Switch 2 already and we have the same issue on the new Switch 2 in the office.
Quite a few of these aren't EU members, some aren't even in Europe; do we know why they were added? e.g.: Switzerland or United Kingdom; but also Oman or United Arab Emirates.
It's easier for Nintendo of Europe to switch over everyone than to stock and supply 2 versions of every product. Also I'd bet most of their sales come from the EU countries where the replaceable battery requirement is forcing this new SKU deployment anyways.
That's probably because Iceland is not an official Sales-territory of Nintendo, it's handled by Bergsala AB, a swedish distributor which serves the market there.
It’s infuriating that it’s not just the default, especially for a game console where the majority of profit is coming from software sales.
Every Switch that becomes unplayable where fixing it costs more than a $20 battery replacement is a console that is not buying games from the Nintendo eShop.
> Amazes me they don't just sell it like that everywhere because it sounds a lot like a product improvement...
I'm not so sure. The first laptop I bought, a Titanium Powerbook, had replaceable batteries. And even better than that: you could hot-swap them while the laptop was running on battery power, and the laptop wouldn't even shut off. It felt leagues ahead of even modern replaceable battery functionality, and honestly? After owning that laptop for years, I felt like I just wasted my money with that additional battery.
Part of it, I'm sure, was that I didn't have an external charger to charge the battery not currently in the laptop. But on the whole, it just didn't feel like it was actually worthwhile, and when Apple stopped shipping replaceable batteries, I've never missed it.
(Hot swapping the batteries really was awesome, though)
I had an Apple laptop that had two bays, one on the left and one on the right. Usually, you'd have the battery on the left and the CD drive on the right. But for lots of people, battery life was more important than a CD drive on a laptop, so you could double your battery life by putting in a battery on both sides.
The thing about the TI powerbook was, it didn't have to be plugged in to hot swap the battery. You could do it when running on battery power. (It had a tiny internal battery, that could run it for like 20-30 seconds, so long as the screen was closed).
It did also run when plugged in with the battery removed, which is good 'cause the battery eventually failed. So this way I can still run it.
Non-replaceable batteries are worse for consumers and worse for the environment. The fact that you "do not miss" a better world, does not mean it is not better.
Easily swappable batteries do have significant downsides, you either need to compromise on capacity or form factor.
Of course that doesn’t mean they should be hard to replace with some tools and effort.
To be fair back in those days laptops only lasted on battery power for a few hours at most (also old batteries had a very short lifetime compared to modern ones) so being able to swap it was an actually useful feature.
>Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model will all continue to be manufactured in 2026, and should be widely available in Europe all year.
>From mid-February 2027, almost ten years after Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems – specifically Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model. Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027.
Understandable, but maybe that shouldn't be buried in the FAQ...
Interesting, in the fineprint they actually confirm that they set the "Switch 1" End-Of-Life by Feb.2027 and stop selling it.
This means they will lose the revenue of that product-line (currently ~15% of their total hardware unit sales according to their fiscal report [0]), which may help accelerate the need for a "lite" version of the Switch2 to recover this market-segment...
...or not, because console sales is generally dropping and there's actually no competition to Nintendo in the handheld console segment...
Bleak times ahead for the gaming industry, and for the gamers...
Not sure what they'll do (Maybe they'll release Switch2 Lite or Switch 2 OLED in Q2/Q3 2027). but I guess like Apple stopped with Lightning until they finished their transition to USB-C they'll just let the transition work.
Also, third party batteries vary wildly in quality -- I've replaced the battery in my Nintendo switch twice, both times using brands I've heard of, and neither battery is as good as the original OEM battery was when i first got it.
It's kinda crazy that they're releasing an improved version only in places where it's mandatory by law. You'd think it's cheaper (and definitely better PR) to just release the new version everywhere.
It’s equal parts funny and frustrating to see how deep into the ”a few hypothetical percent of profits for corporations matters more than customer rights and less e-waste” some are.
I'm preparing to release my first app to the App Store and they're currently requiring me to dox myself if I want to sell in the EU. Which facts am I missing that makes this not very inconvenient for me?
So there was nothing "limiting" them from making it already with user-replaceable batteries, they just didn't care enough until EU forced them (like all the smartphone brands). Love EU.
The redesign is because the ease of accessing the batteries did not comply with the new rules. The pro controller in particular requires almost complete disassembly to get to the module, and the Switch 2's battery uses double-sided adhesive which is finicky. Joycons can also be a bit finicky to navigate for the uninitiated.
Also, as the device is Japanese, it uses JIS screws rather than Philips, which could surprise some. These are superior for service - Philips screws are specifically designed to strip during assembly to prevent over-torquing - but they do require you to have the right, "exotic" screwdriver. As JIS screwdrivers are compatible with and superior in bite even for Philips screws, it's a good habit to just always use those instead for electronics. iFixit kits and such include them.
I celebrate user-swappable batteries and I think I like the battery regulations. I just don't think the Ghost of Iwata is under your bed twirling a Wario moustache while thinking about how to screw you over. The current Switch battery situation is simply a result of user-swappable not being a requirement, among the countless other requirements already in contention.
That's Nintendo's entire business model and the reason why they've been thriving since for ever in gaming and even the bad times where actually positive cash flow wise. They're not losing a single sale because the battery cannot be replaced, unless that sale was far from guaranteed to begin win.
Through a combination of internal and external factors, lithium batteries go through irreversible chemical changes on every charge cycle. Total charge capacity always trends down. Depending on a large number of variables, this might happen quickly or it might happen so slow you might never notice at all. It's all down to how and where the battery is used because temperature is mostly what drives the chemical reactions.
The other thing is that lithium batteries which have been deeply discharged below safe levels are permanently damaged. Just like charge cycle wear, this can be immediately apparent, or something that goes unnoticed forever, but the cell is damaged and will never be the same. Recharging such a battery can cause physical damage inside the cell.
Point is, batteries are chemical cells. They don't last forever because most chemical reactions are not perfectly reversible. Their specific application and environment strongly affects how long they last. But we do know conclusively that when lithium batteries are kept hot and charged and discharged at high current (such as in a handheld gaming device), they degrade faster. Cells which are kept at a stable temperature and low currents (such as headphones) degrade very slowly and can last a long time.
If you look past superstition, there's an entire industry that's been rigorously studying this problem for decades. There's a lot of literature and evidence.
Lithium cells do degrade. How fast they degrade depends on cell quality and environmental factors. It is, unequivocally, a question of when a battery will fail. It might well be a decade or two, but it will fail eventually.
I try to keep my cell phones as long as I feasibly can. Every single one I've used for more than 3 years has had its battery fail (as expected for a device that sees such heavy cycling). My current phone is on its 3rd replacement battery.
E: DS4 = DualShock 4, DS5 = DualSense; these are the standard PlayStation controllers for the PS4 and the PS5 respectively.
But there is at least some argument that smartphones nowadays have some pretty crazy waterproofness that I'm not sure is physically possible with a replaceable battery?
>Battery capacity: 5172mAh, approximately 1% smaller than current version (5220mAh)
At the very least, the design will be more complicated to accommodate replaceable batteries. That costs money. There's a lot more to "limiting" than functionality.
Thanks to this regulation, they will the next time around.
The truth is that the product with the 16% reduced capacity (Switch 2 Pro controller) is 7g lighter and the one with the 5% increased capacity (Gamecube controller) is 5g heavier.
Besides those two, the general idea is that the capacity is the same with 2-3% extra weight.
The Switch 2 itself loses 1% of battery capacity, most other products none at all.
Your framing seems a bit selective to the point of being misleading.
The basic Joy-cons have no change to their battery capacity.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Joy-Con+Battery+Replacement/113...
> The revised products will be available on a rolling basis in territories where Nintendo of Europe conducts business, either directly or through a distributor, namely: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
The change surely eats into their margin per device, so they prefer to keep the higher margin for the rest of the world and recalculate their margin for europe.
However interesting: "The Americas" sells 34% of all Switch2 in the world [0]. I wouldn't expect the US to mandate the same changes, but if e.g. Canada or Brazil also demand replaceable batteries, it could push the needle to making it a default HW-feature of Switch2...
[0] https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2026/260203_2e.pdf
From my experience, it comes from costs generated by:
1. Additional R&D-work and QA for the modification
2. New supply-chain deals for lower-volume components
Current sales-volume of Europe is only a quarter of the global volume, so price-negotiation is based on a much lower total volume-forecast.
Even if not, Battery prices today are ~15% higher than in 2024 (I expect Nintendo signed the supply-deal in late 2024), it'll be hard for Nintendo to cancel their existing supply-contract before fulfilling it (!), move to a different component AND get the same/lower price.
--> Better to sell other regions as-is, fulfill the contract and hope for a better climate in a year.
3. Tooling/Assembly (Ramp-Up costs, different processes, QA,...)
4. Re-certification of HW for relevant bodies in that region (Europe is quite lean on this, CE-certification is simple compared to US FTC/FCC)
I can almost hear the conversation with Nintendo of America CEO about covering 1/3 of the cost to get the same SKU and them simply saying "No, we just raised the prices because of component-cost increase, we wait for the HW-refresh in 2H/2027"
I wouldn't be surprised if they plan to unify the SKU again with a premium "Switch 2 OLED", offsetting the additional costs, preserving the margin and having an additional selling-point...
The biggest Switch issue by far is joystick drift on joycons. I've replaced 3 on my Switch 2 already and we have the same issue on the new Switch 2 in the office.
Every Switch that becomes unplayable where fixing it costs more than a $20 battery replacement is a console that is not buying games from the Nintendo eShop.
I'm not so sure. The first laptop I bought, a Titanium Powerbook, had replaceable batteries. And even better than that: you could hot-swap them while the laptop was running on battery power, and the laptop wouldn't even shut off. It felt leagues ahead of even modern replaceable battery functionality, and honestly? After owning that laptop for years, I felt like I just wasted my money with that additional battery.
Part of it, I'm sure, was that I didn't have an external charger to charge the battery not currently in the laptop. But on the whole, it just didn't feel like it was actually worthwhile, and when Apple stopped shipping replaceable batteries, I've never missed it.
(Hot swapping the batteries really was awesome, though)
Tech used to be fricken cool :-)
It did also run when plugged in with the battery removed, which is good 'cause the battery eventually failed. So this way I can still run it.
Non-replaceable batteries are worse for consumers and worse for the environment. The fact that you "do not miss" a better world, does not mean it is not better.
Of course that doesn’t mean they should be hard to replace with some tools and effort.
To be fair back in those days laptops only lasted on battery power for a few hours at most (also old batteries had a very short lifetime compared to modern ones) so being able to swap it was an actually useful feature.
Most batteries are replaceable. The difference is the level of effort involved.
In the abstract, yeah, it's better. But the extra battery cost me a lot of money, and I did not feel it was money well spent.
>From mid-February 2027, almost ten years after Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems – specifically Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model. Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027.
Understandable, but maybe that shouldn't be buried in the FAQ...
The below products will not be replaced by versions that contain user-replaceable batteries in Europe:
- Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Controller for Nintendo Switch
- Pokémon™ GO Plus +
- Nintendo Switch
- Nintendo Switch Lite
- Nintendo Switch – OLED Model
- Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
- SEGA Mega Drive Control Pad for Nintendo Switch
- Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) Controller for Nintendo Switch
Nintendo will no longer offer the above-named products on Nintendo Store after mid-February 2027.
This means they will lose the revenue of that product-line (currently ~15% of their total hardware unit sales according to their fiscal report [0]), which may help accelerate the need for a "lite" version of the Switch2 to recover this market-segment...
...or not, because console sales is generally dropping and there's actually no competition to Nintendo in the handheld console segment...
Bleak times ahead for the gaming industry, and for the gamers...
[0] https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2026/260203_2e.pdf
https://infinite-battery.com :)