BODY: Nintendo has figured out the one thing console bundles usually get wrong: the pack-in game nobody wanted. Its new Japanese Switch 2 set hands the choice to the buyer instead.
Announced October 6 by Nintendo (HQ: Minami-ku, Kyoto; president Shuntaro Furukawa), the "Nintendo Switch 2 (Japanese / Domestic Use Only) Pick-a-Game Set" arrives November 12 at ¥63,980 including tax. Inside the box is a standard Japanese-language Switch 2 — console, two Joy-Con with straps, dock, grip, AC adapter, USB-C cable, HDMI cable — plus a flyer carrying a single download code.
That code buys one of three Nintendo-published titles, and the lineup is deliberately broad: Mario Kart World, the Switch 2 launch juggernaut; Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, the motion-control party sequel; or Tomodachi Collection: Wakuwaku Seikatsu, the Mii-powered life sim — notable because it's an original Switch game, played on Switch 2 via backward compatibility rather than a native Switch 2 release.
Redemption runs through the Nintendo eShop and requires an internet connection and a Nintendo Account. The code expires March 31, 2027, which gives holiday buyers a comfortable runway but is a hard deadline worth noting for anyone gifting the set and leaving the flyer in the box.
The math is the real story. Nintendo raised the Japanese-only Switch 2 from ¥49,980 to ¥59,980 on May 25, 2026, so this set carries a ¥4,000 premium over the bare console while including a game that retails for roughly double that.
The insider take
The "domestic use only" label is the quiet context here. That SKU exists because the weak yen made Japan the cheapest place on earth to buy a Switch 2, and Nintendo locked the hardware's language and region to blunt the gray-market export trade siphoning stock away from Japanese families. The May price hike narrowed that gap further — but it also meant Japanese buyers absorbed a ¥10,000 increase that overseas buyers did not. Read in that light, a choose-your-own-game bundle landing six weeks before year-end looks less like a promotion and more like goodwill repair, timed precisely for otoshidama season shopping.
Originally reported by はてなブックマーク (Japanese).