It's finally happening: Nintendo is halting sales of the original Nintendo Switch in one region. As of February 2027, Nintendo will no longer sell new original Switch consoles in Europe.

This is in response to new regulations, which would compel Nintendo to release its handhelds with a battery that can be replaced by consumers. Rather than make the necessary adjustments, Nintendo has just decided to pull all original Switch models from the market, making Europe the first region to wave 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

via Nintendo

"From mid-February 2027, almost ten years after Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems – specifically Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model," a statement on the Nintendo website reads. "Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on 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 across the entire Nintendo Switch family of consoles, which signals that Nintendo isn't necessarily done with its last-gen hardware just yet.

However, Nintendo clearly doesn't want to invest that much in the older models, at least not enough to update the batteries to be compliant with European regulations.

Alongside this announcement, Nintendo has outlined what this means for the Switch 2. Revised Switch 2 models will be on sale later this summer. These updated models will have batteries that users can replace themselves, which will affect the console itself and Switch 2 controllers. These new models will only be available in countries in which Nintendo of Europe operates, ruling out any other regions.

While the end of the original Switch was brought about earlier than intended in Europe, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo decided to call it a day. As the company mentioned in its statement, the Switch is almost ten years old now, and with the current component crisis, you won't want to have too much hardware on the market right now. The Switch 2 is costly enough.

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Nintendo Switch

Brand Nintendo Original Release Date March 3, 2017 Original MSRP (USD) $299.99, ¥29,980, £279.99, €329.99 Operating System Proprietary, codenamed Horizon Processor Quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 (Nvidia Tegra X1 system-on-chip) Resolution 480p - 1080p (docked) / 1280 x 720 (handheld) Expand Collapse