"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 (in addition to triwing), 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 recently changed the battery of my Switch 1, if for most of the process it was easy, and I really struggled on two points. 1) the plastic part into which the screws are screwed broke, and it is tough to remove them. 2) ungluing the battery with isopropyl alcohol without breaking anything was very long for me.
I recently changed the USB port of my Fairphone 4 and it was just unscrewing and screwing.
So for me it is a great change from Nintendo.
There's been some recent developments with removing batteries glued to the device: use floss or some other thin string and saw through the glue. The string won't pierce the battery and can fit in tight spots.
I think I've read somewhere that JIS was phased out after Philips standard included some of JIS features and that theoretically modern Philips screwdrivers should be compatible with JIS.
Philips in PZ screws is generally going to cam out like a regular philips head, just because you're not biting into the top with the PZ... triangle bits? I'm sure there's a technical name haha. So you can get by with that, a self-selected crappy philips experience when you could've chosen pozidriv bliss.
Philips in JIS screws is an exercise in anger management. IIRC, JIS has a much wider angle on the bottom of the drive, making it sink into the head less than a philips drive would, so it's a great way to turn your philips driver into an artisanaly-rounded single-hole punch.
>it uses JIS screws rather than Philips (in addition to triwing)
I don't think this is an issue for anyone who has had to disassemble a japanese device before, and the bits are widely available online. Countless youtube videos have discussed that JIS vs Philips in the consumer space are largely compatible outside of american aircraft construction.
Phillips Heads: The design is often criticized for its tendency to cam out at lower torque levels than other "cross head" designs. There has long been a popular belief that this was a deliberate feature of the design, to assemble aluminium aircraft without overtightening the fasteners.[15]: 85 [16] There is no good evidence for this suggestion, and the property is not mentioned in the original patents.[17]
If I were to speculate, the point of phillips head was to just be easier to use than flat head while still being easy to manufacture 90 years ago. The better heads introduced since then have more intricate designs that require more precise manufacturing than a simple stamp
It has more to do with manufacturing techniques. Screw heads are stamped. A cone shape, with all sloped sides, is easier to stamp reliably. Even the famed Robertson bits from canada have a slight slope for this reason.
Your comment is interesting but next time say "Apple," right to repair isn't really about this Portlandia-esque mealy mouthed nerdery your rhetoric trades in. The batteries cost "$1" so I should be able to just buy them and quickly replace them. It's that simple.
I've stripped out every sort of head. It isn't the heads fault really. Lack of thread treatment and/or correct application of torque is the cause and can happen to any head.
iPhone batteries are actually relatively easy to access and replace. The only annoying thing that Apple (and most other gadgets) insist on is adhesive strip mounting of the battery. Just use screws please.
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.
"Vote with money" is such a funny talking point in this discussion. It's a metaphor for actual voting, with votes, which the people already did, for politicians who are now protecting their interests. You just don't like corporations being told what to do.
"Voting" with money is an extremely direct way of influencing something - you clearly want it or you don't want it. People definitely wanted Switches already, hence Nintendo is a going concern.
Voting for politicians (if you even bother) who might someday vote for or against something like this is a far, far weaker signal, if any at all. Politicians can easily do things that are vastly unpopular - e.g. in the UK the mass immigration that is clearly deeply unpopular but politicians refuse to change it.
"Vote with your wallet" in a K shaped economy simply becomes the slogan of modern feudalism.
Funnily enough, these regulations were made by policy makers who were voted in with votes, and put such a regulation to its own vote. It's the most democratic way to approach this.
Rather than using the coloring of "protected from themselves" I prefer to view consumer protection boards as a collectivized bargaining unit for the consumers as a whole. Similar to unions the deals they strike won't be maximally optimal for all workers but a good consumer protection agency can balance the concerns of consumers and bargain as a single entity with the company. Otherwise the imbalance of bargaining power makes it extremely difficult for change to be enacted.
As a regulatory decision, this isn't about protecting the consumer. It's about preventing an externality being handled by all of society, specifically reducing e-waste.
Companies like these enjoy artificial monopolies thanks to IP laws. Why don’t we have the freedom to copy their products and make them the way we want?
I just don't need a government to declare that I'm a victim by treating me like I'm not capable of saying, "no, the Switch 2 isn't cutting it for the pricetag. I'll skip this gen's Pokemon." This isn't bread. It's a luxury good.
Yes but eliminating unnecessary e-waste is a good thing for everyone.
This isn't about the government being your nanny, it's about the government, long term, building a better more sustainable society for everyone, as it should be doing. And I don't think there's a reasonable objection to that.
As mentioned elsewhere, it's also important to remember that the batteries were fully serviceable - available for purchase, nicely compartmentized and with easy connectors. The products were definitely not designed to die with their batteries. They just weren't compliant with the new rules - this is quite different than a certain fruit company that have historically made battery replacements difficult for even service technicians to complete without consequences like constant user prompts.
I imagine the various products had their specific own conflicts with the rules, like requiring too much disassembly (the Pro controller in particular has to be disassembled from the front first), or the Switch 2 holding the battery with double-sided tape. Not to mention that you might not realize that the screw are JIS spec, stripping them with the Philips screwdriver you found in your drawer. Also triwing.
This doesn't really take into account the real history around user replaceable batteries. It's been happening for years and when there are no alternatives to choose from its not a "vote with your wallet" situation. For example at some point MacBooks just stopped shipping with replaceable batteries and its disingenuous to expect someone to then switch to Dell, Lenovo, or something else. Those platforms can't run MacOS so the choice was made for the users. If you depend on MacOS and the software that runs on it, then your choice was clear--buy a new MacBook with a glued battery.
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.
It's not about the console itself, but the accessories, anything that makes you buy more controllers means more money for them. And batteries aren't even the worst offender here.
Controllers have been using USB and an almost identical layout since the Xbox1 days 25 years ago, yet most game controller remain incompatible with each other, even within the same company. PS3 won't work on PS4 and PS4 won't work on PS5. Ironically, PS4 and PS5 controller will work on PS3, since that was the first and last console that supported plain old USB HID. Meanwhile Xbox360 had a lock-out chip to prevent third party controller and the Xbox360 controller don't work on XboxOne/Series either. XboxOne and XboxSeries at least are compatible. Meanwhile on PC pretty much everything works.
And then you have the whole stick drift problem, that has been solved since Dreamcast and PS3 SIXAXIS with Hall effect joysticks, but even decades later we still have controllers going in the bin due for easily avoidable reasons.
Rubber coating is another very common way to add an expiry date to devices that wouldn't have one otherwise.
If we wanted to get serious with the whole "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", there are a lot more low hanging fruit than just the batteries.
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.
The Switch 1 is almost 10 years old. Batteries don't have that much longevity.
And it was unnecessarily hard (actually dangerous due to fire risk) to replace it with a 3rd-party battery replacement due to excessive amounts of strong adhesive holding the battery in place.
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.
I think it's fair to object to the point above on the basis that users have very little knowledge of how quickly batteries will fail and thus the cost of that failure is hidden from the market. It takes years or decades for consumer usage of devices to give new purchasers a fair picture of the hardware difficulties surrounding the battery - and, by then, there's a newer model with different qualities on the market.
A good number of users will never hit troubles with their battery since electronic devices are treated rather cavalierly and replaced before those defects will surface, so I object to the wording that all users will hit that - but I still think it's clearly in the best interests of the majority of consumers to bargain for better lifetime extension support.
Quoting just one of the smallest one feels a bit... charged. There's small tradeoffs among all of them when you account for weight.
For everyone else here's the full list:
Switch 2
Battery capacity: 5172mAh, approximately 1% smaller than current version (5220mAh)
Weight: Approximately 411g, around 10g heavier than current version
With Joy-Con 2 controllers attached: Approximately 548g, around 14g heavier than current version (approximately 534g).
JoyCon 2:
Battery capacity: No change.
Weight: each 2g heavier
Switch 2 Pro Controller:
Battery capacity: 897mAh, approximately 16% smaller than current version (1070mAh).
Weight: Approximately 228g, around 7g lighter than current version (approximately 235g).
N64 Controller:
Battery capacity: No change.
Weight: Approximately 234g, around 1g heavier than current version (approximately 233g)
GameCube controller:
Battery capacity: 525mAh, approximately 5% larger than current version (500mAh).
Weight: 215g, around 5g heavier than current version (210g).
The console one seems the only relevant one. I'm a casual gamer, but the joycon running out of battery doesn't feel that annoying to me. That 16% has a much smaller impact on the JoyCon than on the main device.
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?
In more concrete terms, there are modern (2025) smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy XCover7 Pro w/ replaceable batteries which have IP67 (1 meter of water for 30 minutes) or higher certification. The back panel popping off too easily (and dumping the battery with it) is one of the common cons with the device though, so while you can get everything it is an extra layer of difficulty to try to design around correctly.
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?
Not only that, but if phone batteries were user replaceable, they could be sold in multiple capacities. So people that want "thin" phones can keep their camera protrusions, and the people that want more battery capacity could get a pack that allows the phone to sit flush on a table.
A thicker battery would need a new back built with a hump or standoffs across the whole back to increase the overall thickness to match the new larger battery thickness...
A modern cell phone is very different from the old flip phones and SLRs/large dedicated camera. Resealing modern phones after upgrades/repairs is one of the harder parts of the whole process with fiddly little sealing glue gaskets to maintain IP ratings.
> 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.
The current hack is to buy devices made for disposable batteries and then use rechargeables. Electric toothbrushes almost all come with built-in non-removable batteries... except the cheapest ones, which also work fine.
Part of the reason it was so common in the past was because rechargeable battery technology for small consumers devices was a lot more limited. NiCd was the main choice and they required careful management to keep them working well.
Also there were no real standards for chargers. Nearly every small consumer device that used NiCd batteries came with its own bespoke chargers.
Hence most small consumer devices went with replaceable batteries because they expected nearly everyone to use non-rechargeable batteries.
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.
Didn't care? Consumers don't care about this. Like most EU laws, this is a solution in search of a problem. Nintendo, like every other tech company, did the research and found that people simply don't care about this stuff. Now we have more complicated devices and have to buy our own batteries for what, exactly? There is just very little benefit here.
I think consumers do care when they have to throw away a device or pay for a repair because the battery health has significantly degraded. This is really similar to the argument against having a standardized charging port or requiring usb-c charge ports for cellphones.
I almost bought a Switch 2 but then remembered this was going into effect. Decided to push it off and keep using my still quite functional Switch 1 until I can get one.
Why would anyone not want a user replaceable battery ?
I also specifically ordered an electric toothbrush from UK Amazon awhile back that was (on the surface) identical to the American version. The UK and EU version however had a sort of (not super easy but still not that hard) user replaceable battery. Because they had to redesign with a user replaceable battery it uses a fairly standard sized lithium rechargeable (I forget the exact size - smaller than an 18650 but somewhat common).
The side effect of this was the battery inside is also much higher quality and much higher capacity than the US version. The diameter of the device is slightly larger (to accommodate the larger battery) which also fits my hands better. Even if I never replace the battery the device itself lasts insanely long between charges which is a huge plus. The cost was the same (excluding a small extra charge for shipping).
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 him simply responding "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...
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.
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.
My day 1 Switch battery was definitely significantly degraded when I did a DIY battery swap a couple of years back.
Battery longevity varies based on usage patterns and likely other factors (temperature?), but it's normal to notice a significant reduction in capacity within 4-5 years.
And the amount of adhesive holding the old battery in made replacing it an unnecessarily hard and actually dangerous (risk of battery fire due to physical damage) process.
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.
For sure, and I don’t find carting a spare external battery around horrendous…it just seems like a non-water resistant device like the switch should have an easy battery replacement.
For one thing, Nintendo loves selling overpriced accessories.
> 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.
I have an old ThinkPad as my only laptop. It came to me used, with an aftermarket battery.
That battery was great for a couple of years before it started to get wonky, so I replaced it with a different aftermarket battery.
This process took zero tools. It took less time to swap in a new battery than it did for me to write this comment. Anyone can do it; it is not an arduous procedure.
What was the added environmental cost here? Some "single-use" plastics that lasted for years?
Replacing a Switch 1 battery really annoyed me. No problem with tiny screws and fiddly disassembly.
Big problem with the truly excessive amount and strength of adhesive holding the old one in place, and having a real struggle to remove it (even after trying with IPA and dental floss)
>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...
What constitutes a replaceable battery in this regulation? I don’t want hatches on things. Especially not phones. It’s fine to have some screws between me and a battery, if that makes it have 1% more capacity, 1% more rigid or be 1% more water proof.
The push for replaceable batteries is coming just as battery life is increasing.[1] We're already seeing that with electric cars.
When solid-state batteries finally come out in volume, they should outlast the devices they go into. The big players are saying that solid state batteries in phone size should start shipping in 2027. Cars are further off.
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?
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.
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.
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