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Nintendo Quietly Confirms Switch 2 Revision with Replaceable Battery

Remember the curious “OSM” product code found on the Nintendo Account portal site? The answer is in plain sight (Nintendo Europe compliance page):

Excerpt from Nintendo Europe webpage titled Compliance with EU Directives and Regulations: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 concerning batteries and waste batteries (Batteries Regulation) Like the WEEE Directive, the Batteries Regulation aims to reduce the environmental impact of the manufacture, distribution, use, disposal and recycling of batteries and rechargeable batteries. In doing so, it forbids the supply of batteries and rechargeable batteries with certain hazardous metal content and sets out requirements for batteries' labelling, safe removal from appliances, collection and recycling. Nintendo products are fully compliant with these requirements, and Nintendo cooperates fully with authorised regional institutions to facilitate the proper collection and environmentally sound recovery or disposal of its batteries. In addition, the Regulation requires that from February 18th, 2027, batteries integrated into certain appliances and sold in the EU must be easily replaceable by end-users at any time during the lifetime of the product. Nintendo is implementing measures to comply with these requirements by preparing versions of products to meet the Regulation. For current products with model numbers starting with “BEE”, future compliant versions will have unique model numbers and the additional code “OSM” visible on the packaging, designating them as separate products for regulatory purposes.

For current products with model numbers starting with “BEE”, future [battery regulation] compliant versions will have unique model numbers and the additional code “OSM” visible on the packaging, designating them as separate products for regulatory purposes.

According to Internet Archive, this language wasn’t on the page this February, therefore it must have been added between then and now. And strangely only BEE (Switch 2) products were named in the text above. This seems to suggest that either a) Switch 1 products will no longer be sold in EU after the stock runs out, or b) Nintendo hasn’t decided on the fate of Switch 1 products just yet.

P.S.:

  • Existing products such as Switch Lite and NES Controller must be shipped into EU before 2027-02-18 for them to be legally sold after. Nintendo can stockpile as much as they want, but won’t be able to import more past the deadline.
  • European model is “ōshū moderu” (欧州モデル) in Japanese. Is that the meaning of OSM—EU exclusive?

Related(?): Nintendo Files Four Secret Designs

[Originally posted on 2026-06-03 Pacific Time]