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.
My understanding is that Europeans also generally tend to not use Phillips screws, but Pozidriv instead.
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.
But for electronics I basically never want that behavior.
Pozidriv to the rescue! (just kidding)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The market mechanism breaks down in such circumstances.
I have both a PS5 and an XBOX Series X. Whenever I am playing if I get out of battery on the XBOX, I just change them. In the PS5 is not possible.
I don't get what the advantage is.
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.
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.
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.
The switch doesn't fast charge at absurd rates and generally has good thermals.
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)
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).
Because who cares if the controller lasts 27 or 30 days? (Or so, don't quite me on exact numbers).
~6 hours is quite a drop.
Literally win win win.
This is already a thing for some [dedicated] cameras like the Canon EOS series.
Of course there are extra costs. The parts and the extra assembly isn't free and it does add up.
Perhaps the most expensive part of this whole process is then engineering time to figure out how to place a replaceable battery.
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.
You must be newly hatched.
I have plenty of devices in my gadget box with non-replaceable batteries that pre-date Apple's iPhones, and even its iPods.
Just because something is standard fare doesn't mean it's the only option. Point is, it was quite common in the past.
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...