Nintendo is planning to launch variations of Change 2 {hardware} within the EU that may let customers simply change the battery. To satisfy its obligations from a brand new EU regulation that’s set to enter impact on February 18th, 2027, Nintendo says on its website that it’s “implementing measures to adjust to these necessities by making ready variations of merchandise to fulfill the Regulation.”
Due to EU rules, devices with user-replaceable batteries are making a comeback, as my colleague Dominic Preston wrote recently. Beginning on that February 2027 date, EU guidelines mandate that many varieties of devices, together with transportable sport consoles, should permit customers to comparatively simply take away and change their batteries.
Nintendo doesn’t specify precisely what it would change with this new model of the Change 2 to make battery replacements simpler — at present, taking out the battery within the Change 2 is an concerned, multi-step course of, as shown by iFixit. It’s additionally unclear if a revised mannequin with a replaceable battery will probably be out there in different areas. Nintendo didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
On its web site, Nintendo says that, “For present merchandise with mannequin numbers beginning with ‘BEE’” — which is used with the Change 2, as proven in Nintendo’s filings with the FCC — “future compliant variations may have distinctive mannequin numbers and the extra code ‘OSM’ seen on the packaging, designating them as separate merchandise for regulatory functions.” Change 2 controllers just like the Pro Controller and the Joy-Cons additionally carry the BEE moniker, and we’ve requested Nintendo if these may have user-replaceable batteries as nicely.