Nintendo kicked off 2026 with huge updates for popular games that launched years ago on the original Switch. Animal Crossing: New Horizons' transformative 3.0 update added a new hotel feature that brings offshore strangers to your island as tourists and juiced up visuals on Switch 2, while Splatoon's unexpectedly meaty 11.0.0 update made some major gameplay changes, like the new Flow Aura mechanic for kill streaks and health bars displaying approximate HP for allies and opponents.
During Nintendo's latest investor presentation, president Shuntaro Furukawa explained the company's philosophy on releasing such big updates for legacy Switch titles. It's worth noting that we ran this quote through machine translation, so Furukawa's precise wording is unclear:
