New Horizons and Splatoon 3

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has spoken about why the company came out with free major updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Splatoon 3.

Last month, Animal Crossing received its big 3.0.0 patch at no extra cost alongside a paid Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. Meanwhile, Splatoon 3 also just dropped a big patch with health bars and more, but last year, version 10.0.0 dropped which included some enhancements for Nintendo Switch 2 players.

During the Q&A session of Nintendo’s financial results this week, Furukawa had this to say when asked about the business rationale for releasing such major free updates for existing Switch titles after the Switch 2 launch:

In January, alongside the free update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we released Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. Since the update, we’ve seen many players return to the game, including some who had taken a break. We’re also seeing an increase in players experiencing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Switch 2 for the first time. We feel this sets us up well for the start of the year.

To promote a new platform, it’s essential to release new titles regularly. Furthermore, as we transition from Switch to Switch 2 over the coming years, we believe it’s critically important to maintain our connection with customers who are already experiencing Nintendo hardware.

In this sense, we wanted to update major Switch hits like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Splatoon 3 at this time. This aims to encourage more people to play on Switch while also creating a flow where customers can transition to Switch 2 at their own pace, especially when new titles they’re interested in are released. From this perspective, we see value in updating popular Switch software to sustain its usage and encourage players to revisit these titles.

You can find the patch notes for Animal Crossing: New Horizons version 3.0.0 here. We have the same for Splatoon 3 version 10.0.0 here.