With a little over a week to go until Switch 2’s arrival, some customers are already claiming to have received their consoles – but anyone hoping to play ahead of release are apparently out of luck, as units reportedly won’t function without a day one update.
As spotted by IGN, YouTuber Ali Almarzooqi initially uploaded an eight-second video showing them opening their Switch 2 box – or at least a convincing replica – to reveal the console within. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the video was yanked as a result of a copyright claim by Web Capio, a company that markets itself as selling “anti-piracy solutions.”
In a since-nuked comment thread below the video, Almarzooqi (AKA a2dubai) responded to a viewer asking for “more video please” by explaining, “Nintendo locked the Switch 2. It needs [an] update to function, so I’m waiting for June 5th to unlock it.”.
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Notably, this doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident. Gaming news and deals poster Wario64 revealed they’d received correspondence – seemingly included corroborating images – from another Switch 2 customer who’d received their console early. “I have no permission to post pics,” Wario64 wrote in a post on social media, “but can share that when they try to boot a Switch 1 game, a message prompts ‘Please connect to the internet and update your system.’ Needs update to boot a game.”