Nintendo has revealed a new Joy-Con charging station for the Switch, letting players charge their controllers without connecting them to the console. That on its own isn’t particularly notable — both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S already have an official controller dock — but what makes the recent announcement intriguing is its timing. Not only did Nintendo wait seven years after the Switch’s launch to release the Joy-Con charging dock, it’s also coming less than a year after the Switch 2 is set to be revealed.
The Joy-Con charging dock itself is pretty standard stuff. It’s a simple stand with an attached battery that Joy-Cons can be connected to to recharge between play sessions. You can also detach the charging component, making it a bit easier to carry if you need a portable charger. While no listing is available for pre-orders in North America yet, the Japanese release of the dock is slated for October 17 with a price of 3,300 yen (approximately $21).
“This is recommended for those who have multiple Joy-Cons,” reads a machine translation of the dock’s Japanese listing, “such as when you want to charge the number of Joy-Cons for everyone to play together in games such as the Mario Party series or Nintendo Switch Sports, or when you want to charge Joy-Cons that you are not using while playing in portable mode.”
It just so happens that Super Mario Party Jamboree launches on October 17 as well, but that’s not the only bit of serendipitous timing surrounding the Joy-Con charging dock. Earlier this year, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that the successor to the Switch will be revealed by the end of the current financial year, which concludes in March 2025. That means that it’s entirely possible we’ll know more about the Switch 2 around the time the Joy-Con dock arrives in stores.
While the timing could be coincidental, it would be odd for Nintendo to release an accessory for its current console, then almost immediately release a successor that makes the accessory obsolete. It’s not totally out of the question, but given that plenty of third-party Joy-Con charging docks have been around for years at this point, there’s no real reason to launch a product with such a small window for people to actually buy it.
Because of that, Nintendo’s announcement immediately sparked speculation that the Joy-Con charging dock may also be used for the Switch 2. There are a few possible things that could mean. For one, if the charging dock is in fact a cross-generation accessory, it would mean that original Switch Joy-Cons will be compatible with the new hardware, but there’s more to it than that.
As VGC’s Chris Scullion pointed out on Twitter, rumors have already been circulating that the Switch 2 will use magnets to attach controllers to its sides. That would mean that current Joy-Cons, which simply slide into place on rails built into the Switch, would have no way to connect to the new console, and thus no way to charge without some kind of adapter. The Joy-Con charging dock could be the bridge that makes original Switch controllers compatible with the new hardware — if the magnetic attachment rumor is in fact true. It’s also possible that the design of the Switch 2 will differ significantly from its predecessor and won’t feature a way to charge Joy-Cons by connecting them directly to the console at all, in which case some sort of charging dock or cable would still be necessary.
How exactly will the Joy-Con charging dock play into Nintendo’s plans for Switch 2? That’ll likely become clearer around the accessory’s launch. By that time, another Nintendo Direct is extremely likely, which would be the ideal place to start dropping information about the upcoming console or games that will cross from this generation into the next. At the very least, look forward to using it to keep those Joy-Cons charged in between friendship-ruining rounds of Mario Party Jamboree.
