The EU's battery-exemption list named smartwatches, fitness trackers, toys and smart glasses — and zero game controllers. Nintendo's own spec sheet prices the omission.

On 14 July 2026 the European Commission adopted a delegated act (C(2026) 5031) that rewrites Article 11(2) of the EU Batteries Regulation and hands eight categories of products a way out of the strictest consumer-repair mandate in the single market. The Commission's own summary says it added "six new categories" — wearables such as smartwatches, fitness trackers and smart glasses, electric toys, food-contact thermometer probes, ATEX equipment, on-body drug-delivery systems and roof-mounted machine telematics. A full-text scan of the adopted legal text returns "controller" 0, "game" 0, "console" 0, "gamepad" 0, "handheld" 0. Game controllers are not on the list, not in the recitals, and not carved out anywhere in the eight points. They are precisely the consumer-electronics category that got no relief — and Nintendo's own published spec sheet shows, in grams and milliamp-hours, what complying instead of being exempted costs.

The rule

Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 is the provision that made user-replaceable batteries a design requirement rather than a repairability preference. The operative text is blunt:

"Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product."

The regulation defines "readily removable" down to the tool:

"A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product."

Article 11 also requires that products "be accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries," published permanently on a public website.

This is not a future regime with a vague start date. Article 96(2)(a) of the same regulation states: "Article 11 shall apply from 18 February 2027." Article 95 repeals the old Batteries Directive (2006/66/EC) but keeps its Article 11 alive on a bridge "until 18 February 2027." The EU wrote the deadline into two separate articles so there would be no gap and no ambiguity.

A crucial scoping detail, and the one that explains everything the industry is doing: Article 11 binds the person who places products on the market. It is not a retrofitting rule. Hardware already sold before 18 February 2027 is untouched — a point Nintendo states for its own customers, and the reason the industry's response is a rolling, forward-going design change rather than a recall.

What the exemption actually exempted

Article 11(2) has always allowed a narrow list of products to make their batteries replaceable "only by independent professionals" instead of by the owner. The original regulation listed two: wet appliances and professional medical devices. The delegated act adopted on 14 July 2026 replaces that paragraph and expands it to eight points:

Six of the eight — (c) through (h) — are new, which reconciles the Commission's "six new categories" language with the act's eight points. And a safety gate is bolted onto the whole list:

"The derogations set out in points (a), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g) and (h) of this paragraph shall only be applicable where such derogation is required to ensure the safety of the user and the appliance."

The recitals are explicit about why each category earned an exemption, and the reasoning is instructive because it describes a category of products a controller is not. Wearables qualify because "the miniaturization of wearable devices and the portable batteries powering them may result in situations where the battery is so tightly encapsulated … that its removal may create a non-negligible risk of damage or piercing of the battery." Toys get a temporary pass because of Regulation (EU) 2025/2509's 2030 design rules. Food probes qualify because "leaked chemicals from the battery would contaminate food." ATEX equipment qualifies because removal "could result in a violation of the safety requirements." On-body delivery systems qualify because removal "could result in … a false administration of medication."

A game controller — a device the user grips, that contains a hand-sized battery behind a removable panel, and whose entire failure mode is a worn-out battery after years of vibration and charging cycles — fits none of these rationales. So the Commission did not name it.

Nintendo's spec sheet is the receipt

Nintendo is the only platform holder that has gone on the record with numbers. Its European support page — "Information about upcoming battery-related revisions to some Nintendo products" — begins:

"Starting summer 2026, in preparation for upcoming changes in European battery regulations coming into effect in mid-February 2027, selected Nintendo products in Europe will begin to be replaced on a rolling basis by revisions that contain a user-replaceable battery."

The page then publishes the design delta product by product. This is a manufacturer disclosing, in public, the physical tax that compliance imposes:

• Nintendo Switch 2 console — from 5,220mAh to 5,172mAh, "approximately 1% smaller." Weight from ~401g to ~411g. Its included Joy-Con 2 get user-replaceable batteries too.
• Joy-Con 2 pair — battery capacity unchanged, but each controller gains about 2g (~66g → ~68g, ~67g → ~69g).
• Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller — from 1,070mAh to 897mAh, "approximately 16% smaller." Weight drops ~7g.
• Nintendo 64 Controller for Nintendo Switch — capacity unchanged; ~1g heavier.
• Nintendo GameCube Controller for Nintendo Switch 2 — 500mAh → 525mAh, "approximately 5% larger"; 210g → 215g.

The Pro Controller is the number that matters. The controller with the most demanding power budget — wireless, with the longest runtime expectations — surrenders 16% of its battery capacity to make the cell a user-swappable part. Nintendo also commits that "Battery replacement kits for each product will be available to purchase from Nintendo Store in Europe in the future," which is the operational half of Article 11's requirement.

Nintendo says the quiet part plainly: "There is no difference in functionality between current products and revised products containing user-replaceable batteries." It is not a feature. It is a compliance tax paid in battery life.

The products Nintendo would rather kill than redesign

The same page does something more revealing than redesign the lineup. It publishes a discontinuation list. Under the heading "The below products will not be replaced by versions that contain user-replaceable batteries in Europe":

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Controller, Pokémon GO Plus+, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, Nintendo Switch – OLED Model, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, SEGA Mega Drive Control Pad, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) Controller.

And then: "Nintendo will no longer offer the above-named products on Nintendo Store after mid-February 2027."

The console-level confirmation is explicit: "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. Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027."

Read the two lists side by side and the shape of the regulation's real-world effect appears. Nintendo applied a make-or-buy calculation to its own catalogue. Where a product is still a going concern on the current generation — the Switch 2, its Joy-Con 2, its Pro Controller, the N64 and GameCube accessories — it redesigns and pays the battery penalty. Where a product is legacy or marginal — a nine-year-old console family, a €30 NES pad, a Pokémon GO Plus+ accessory — it withdraws the product from the EU rather than re-tool it. Article 11 does not just mandate swappable batteries. It is functioning as a product-line pruning mechanism for the European market, and it is the manufacturer, not the regulator, choosing what gets pruned.

There is a second-order effect worth naming: the Switch 1 family and its accessories are not being removed because they are unsafe or obsolete. They are being removed because the cost of making a 2017-era accessory EU-compliant exceeds its remaining EU revenue. The regulation produces the same visible outcome in Europe — a smaller catalogue — that a business decision would, and it does so through a safety-and-recycling measure that never mentions game consoles.

The door to an exemption is already shut

If a controller maker wanted the treatment wearables got, the procedural route is Article 11(4), which empowers the Commission to add products to the derogation list by delegated act. That route ran through a Commission Notice (C/2025/214, 8 January 2025) that opened a call for applications. The Commission's own batteries page states the window plainly and closes it: applicants "were invited to do so before 30 April 2025. The process is now closed."

That is the deadline that mattered. The delegated act adopted in July 2026 drew on "the evidence collected through a call for applications … open for three months between February and April 2025." If no controller application was filed and technically validated in that window, no controller appears in the act — which is exactly what the keyword scan shows. And the industry is now lobbying to get the door reopened: the European fire-and-security association Euralarm has publicly urged the Commission "to reopen the procedure foreseen in the 2025 Commission Notice to allow stakeholders to submit new requests for exemptions under Article 11(4)." Reopening it, after an act that spent its political capital on wearables and toys, would be a heavier lift than filing on time in 2025 was.

The Commission also flagged the constraint that will govern any future exemption request: "Small lithium-ion batteries not disposed of correctly are causing an increasing number of fires in waste treatment plants. This must be considered before granting exemptions for products containing such batteries." A game controller contains exactly a small lithium-ion battery. The exemption logic points away from controllers, not toward them.

The silence from the other two platforms

Sony and Microsoft sell controllers into the same 27-plus markets on the same 18 February 2027 clock, and the design problem lands differently on each:

• The DualSense uses a built-in, non-user-replaceable rechargeable pack. Under Article 11(1), that is the design Article 11 prohibits for new units placed on the EU market after the deadline.
• The Xbox Wireless Controller already runs on AA cells or the Play & Charge kit — user-swappable by construction — but Microsoft's own support documentation draws a line through the range: "the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 and Xbox Adaptive Controller have built-in batteries."
• The Nintendo Switch 1 Pro Controller and Joy-Con, on the current design, hold built-in packs — which is why they are on the discontinuation list rather than the redesign list.

Despite repeated searches for a European redesign, a compliance statement, or a derogation application, no public Sony or Microsoft announcement of an Article 11 response has surfaced. That absence is itself the finding: the platform most exposed — the one whose flagship controller has the largest built-in pack and the longest claimed runtime — is the one that has said the most, and it said it by publishing a spec table and a kill list.

What to watch

The delegated act is not yet final law. It was adopted on 14 July 2026, transmitted to the European Parliament and Council for scrutiny, and — per the Commission — "will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, if the European Parliament or the Council fail to object to it." The act had already cleared an expert group in December 2025 and February 2026, public feedback from 28 April to 26 May 2026, and a WTO Technical Barriers to Trade notification from 12 June to 11 July 2026. Objection is unlikely but not impossible, and the two-month scrutiny window is the last moment at which a category could still be added or removed.

After that, the compliance clock runs to 18 February 2027 with no further relief. The interesting question is no longer whether consoles get an exemption — the text says they don't — but what the two silent platforms ship. A DualSense with a serviceable battery compartment, or a European SKU with a smaller cell, or a withdrawal, are the three options Article 11 leaves. Nintendo has already costed its choice. Sony and Microsoft have not told anyone theirs.