It's finally happening: Nintendo is stopping sales of the original Nintendo Switch in one region. Until February 2027, Nintendo will no longer sell new original Switch consoles in Europe.
This is in response to new regulations, which force Nintendo to release its handhelds with batteries that can be replaced by consumers. Instead of making the necessary adjustments, Nintendo recently decided to pull all original Switch models from the market, making Europe the first region to say goodbye to the console.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is getting an upgrade to comply with European regulations – but the original Switch will no longer be sold
“As of mid-February 2027, nearly ten years after the Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell the Nintendo Switch family of systems – specifically the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch – OLED models at retailers,” read a statement on Nintendo's website N. “Sale of Nintendo Switch hardware in the Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027.”
This is despite the fact that Nintendo is still regularly releasing games for the original Switch, with many games going multi-generation. Recently, the long-awaited return of Tomodachi Life was available on the entire Nintendo Switch family of consoles, indicating that Nintendo is not done with its last-gen hardware yet.
However, Nintendo apparently doesn't want to invest that much in older models, at least not enough to update the batteries to comply with European regulations.
Along with this announcement, Nintendo outlined what this means for the Switch 2. The revised Switch 2 models will go on sale later this summer. These updated models will have batteries that users can replace themselves, which will affect the console and Switch 2 controllers. These new models will only be available in the countries where Nintendo of Europe operates, excluding any other regions.
While the original Switch finally arrived in Europe earlier than intended, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo decided to call it a day. As the company noted in its statement, the Switch is now nearly ten years old, and with the current component crisis, you don't want to put too much hardware on the market right now. The Switch 2 is quite expensive.
- brand
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Nintendo
- Original release date
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March 3, 2017
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$299.99, ¥29,980, £279.99, €329.99
- operating system
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Proprietary, codenamed Horizon
- processor
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Quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 (Nvidia Tegra X1 system-on-chip)
- resolve
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480p – 1080p (docked) / 1280 x 720 (handheld)
