However, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was not the first first-party Nintendo game to get an unexpected update. OatmealDome, a Twitter account noted for data mining and documenting Nintendo Switch system upgrades in more detail than Nintendo’s release notes, claimed on November 14 that four Nintendo first-party games got updates. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Splatoon 2, ARMS, and Super Mario Maker 2 all received upgrades, and OatmealDome noted that the rapid changes were likely due to severe security issues discovered in a shared code component that these games may share.
OatmealDome subsequently responded that the upgrades were most likely not done to update those games’ net codes to that found in Splatoon 3, and that doing so would take some time and money. However, at a recent Q&A session, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa revealed that they were looking into methods to improve the Nintendo Switch Online service with further additions. It remains to be seen if this includes enhancements to the new code of previous games.
