Nintendo seems to have settled on plans for the Switch 2 launch in SouthEast Asia.
Last month, a few days after the Switch 2 Direct, the Nintendo Malaysia website shared this message.
The new game system, Nintendo Switch 2, will be released in July-September 2025 in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. We are working to launch online services, including Nintendo Switch Online and the Nintendo eShop in these four countries.
While Nintendo did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay, one could easily speculate that Nintendo was worried about availability because of the issues surrounding US tariffs in Liberation Day.
Nintendo products had been sold in South East Asian countries through the grey market for years, but there were a few times where rumors spread that Nintendo was interested in breaking in decades earlier. It’s been known for some time that some Nintendo products were made in the Philippines for years, so their absence has been particularly strange in that country.
Recently, Nintendo quietly launched efforts to officially enter multiple South East Asian countries, selling Switch and Switch games. As of right now, gamers in these countries can connect your Switch to the internet, but there are no eShop and Switch Online services. Of course, you can make a US based Nintendo account and access online services that way.
Today, Nintendo’s South East Asia Facebook page shared this news:
Nintendo Switch 2 is available on 26 June/ June 26 in Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 official website for details:
You can see the respective pages for each country below:
While the Thailand site uses Thai, all these pages essentially mirror each other with the same information. They list the Switch and Switch 2, and games that are available to buy in physical form. Strangely, while these sites are advertising GameChat, there are no links or information for now regarding these and other online services. We reported Nintendo’s disclaimer that GameChat would not be available in all countries, but it looks like they intend to bring the service here. Nintendo may still be working to get the infrastructure and state approvals to launch for these countries.
Of course, we haven’t forgotten about the good boys and girls of Malaysia, who were not mentioned in this update. The Nintendo Malaysia website still shows the original message about a launch coming between July to September. Malaysians are already memeing about this on the Facebook announcement, joking that Malaysia is part of North Asia or the MCU now.
But of course, anyone who has looked at South East Asia in a map knows that there are even more countries that aren’t mentioned in this announcement. For example, given that Switch 2 consoles are literally assembled in Vietnam, it seems absolutely unfair that they don’t get their own local distributor. Also unmentioned are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, and Timor-Leste.
We don’t know what potential issues Nintendo has in entering those unmentioned countries, but we assume that they’re still building infrastructure and launching their businesses in those countries as well. For Nintendo gamers in South East Asia, it’s a big deal that Nintendo has finally entered the region after five decades. So we can only hope that they find huge success with the Switch 2 launch now, so they can stay here permanently, and continue to spread across the region.
