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...
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...
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.
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.
https://www.euroconsumers.org/game-over-for-faulty-nintendo-...
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 one thing, Nintendo loves selling overpriced accessories.
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.
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?
Most batteries are replaceable. The difference is the level of effort involved.
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)
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.