Less than 3% of Japanese players trying to pre-order Switch 2 want the region-free version, survey suggests

A survey of Japanese players trying to pre-order a Switch 2 has found that the vast majority of them want the cheaper region-locked model exclusive to Japan.

Earlier this month Nintendo announced that a ‘Japanese / Domestic Only’ version of Switch 2 will be the only version available to purchase from general retailers in Japan.

The ‘Domestic Only’ console will retail for a cheaper price (49,980 yen, or $334) and will only have Japanese as the console’s language setting, and the only Nintendo account that can be linked will be one created with the country/region setting set to Japan.

Players who want a region-free model will have to try the Japanese My Nintendo Store, where a more expensive Switch 2 model with multilingual support can be found priced at 69,980 yen ($467).

X user yukino_san_14 surveyed nearly 60,000 players who had entered Nintendo’s lottery to pre-order a Switch 2 console from its official My Nintendo Store (as spotted by Automaton).

69.7% of those surveyed said they applied for the region-locked Switch 2 bundled with Mario Kart World, while a further 27.5% said they applied for the region-locked Switch 2 console on its own.

This left just 2.9% of respondents who said they applied for the more expensive region-free, multilingual version exclusive to the My Nintendo Store.

While the cheaper region-locked model is clearly more popular in Japan according to these findings, there’s a silver lining for those looking for the region-free version, in that their chance of being chosen for Nintendo’s Switch 2 pre-order lottery was much higher due to lesser demand.

According to the survey, of the 69.7% of people who applied to pre-order a region-locked Switch 2 with Mario Kart World, only 24.3% were successfully chosen in the lottery. Of the 27.5% who applied to pre-order the region-locked console on its own, just 17.6% were successful.

However, of the 2.9% who applied to pre-order for the more expensive region-free model, the vast majority of them – 91.2% of those surveyed – were successful and were able to pre-order their chosen console.

Switch 2の抽選が可視化される良いアンケート！

多言語版の当選率91%とマリカセットの人気が際立つ https://t.co/Vhj0tP3vqo pic.twitter.com/l1YzVcA4dt

— ゆきのさん (@yukino_san_14) April 25, 2025

Nintendo told its Japanese players earlier this week that a “significant number” of them would be unsuccessful in their lottery applications, because the number of people who had applied had “far exceeded” its expectations.

According to Nintendo, 2.2 million people in Japan entered its lottery to pre-order the console, a figure it called “astonishing”.

“To spare those who were not selected in the first lottery sale the trouble of reapplying, the My Nintendo Store will automatically carry over unselected applicants from the first lottery to the second lottery,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa explained in a statement.

“However, even with the number of units available in the second lottery sale, we will not be able to fulfil all the applications we have received. We deeply apologize for failing to meet your expectations despite our preparations.”