Nintendo has officially confirmed that in the coming months it will release a revised model of the Switch 2 with a removable battery. This model, initially only available in Europe, aims to comply with current European regulations that state that all electronic devices must have replaceable batteries starting February 18, 2027.
A more eco-friendly console
This is a necessary move by Nintendo, as they wouldn’t be able to sell the console any other way, but it’s a bit clumsy. Although the regulation will not come into effect until February of next year, it was approved in 2023, which means that by the time of the Nintendo Switch 2’s release, they were already aware of this regulation and had no reason to release a version of the console without a removable battery in the first place, complicating their production tasks even further.
In this regard, Nintendo has stated that “Nintendo products fully comply with these requirements, and Nintendo fully cooperates with the authorized regional institutions to facilitate the proper collection and environmentally respectful recovery or disposal of its batteries”. Emphasizing that it is among their plans to strictly adhere to European laws.
While there is no concrete news on this yet, it is possible that this will also affect the Joy-Con 2 and the Switch 2 Pro Controller 2. With model numbers BEE-012 and BEE-014 and BEE-008 respectively, and since Nintendo has stated that “for current products whose model numbers start with ‘BEE’, future compliant versions will have unique model numbers and the additional code ‘OSM’ visible on the packaging”, everything points to the fact that these could also have new versions with removable batteries. Therefore, for Europe, it seems that we will soon have a much more eco-friendly Nintendo Switch 2.
