As much as Filipinos love Nintendo and their handheld console, Philippine players have often had to create accounts set in other countries to be able to use and buy digital games from Nintendo’s e-shop. That’s finally coming to an end – according to Nintendo, they are currently working on launching Nintendo Switch Online in the Philippines, along with three other countries, namely Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s still no firm date when that will happen, and it seems that Philippine players won’t be able to enjoy the official e-shop opening when the long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 officially launches on June 5 in the US. Nintendo’s official Philippine page also says that the local launch of the new handheld console won’t be until July to September, which is quite a wide estimate. That means Nintendo die-hards will have to wait for 3 months if things go badly before they’re able to enjoy their new handheld.

To recap, the Switch 2 is Nintendo’s most advanced (and expensive) handheld yet, sporting a bigger built-in screen than the first one, at 7.9 inches. It also has a higher resolution panel that can do 1080p resolution, a jump from the 720p panel of the OG model.

While Nintendo only said that the Switch 2 will use a “custom processor made by Nvidia”, previous rumors point to an Nvidia Tegra T239, which is expected to have an ARM A78C CPU that’s bundled with a custom GPU derived from Nvidia’s RTX 30-series Ampere architecture. The said CPU will likely have 1,536 CUDA cores, a 128-bit memory interface paired with LPDDR5 RAM, and a max memory bandwidth of 102GB/s.

The Switch 2 comes with 256GB of internal storage, with Nintendo claiming improved speeds for reading and writing data. Also new to the Switch 2 is an internal fan to keep things cool, along with a Pro controller that adds two new buttons at the back, a new C button on the front, and a headphone jack.