Animal Crossing: New Horizons just got its first update in 9 months, but it really doesn't change much

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ARMS, Splatoon 2, and Super Mario Maker 2 also got surprise updates

Games like Animal Crossing
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo has updated a number of its games, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for a mysterious reason. 

On November 15, Nintendo quietly rolled out a series of updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ver. 2.0.6), ARMS (ver.5.4.1), Splatoon 2 (ver.5.5.1), and Super Mario Maker 2 (ver.3.0.2). Each of the patch notes included a vague description of the update which mostly relates to the game's stability and online connectivity. 

For each of the games, the main patch note is: "Adjustments have been made to make the game more comfortable to play." How exactly Nintendo has gone about making each of these games more comfortable to play is still a mystery. As always though, Nintendo dataminer @OatmealDome is on hand to take a deeper look at the updates and shed light on what they change in the game. 

Talking about all four of the games in question, OatmealDome said: "All these games just got updates with the equivalent of 'stability' in the patch notes," the tweet continues, "this is probably a patch to fix a major security bug in a common code component." Basically, it's just something Nintendo has fixed behind the scenes and probably won't affect players and how they play very much.

This has got to be disappointing news for Animal Crossing fans in particular. This is the first update Nintendo has rolled out to its island getaway game in nine months and it hasn't done anything to make the game more interesting to play. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that Nintendo ever will make any major changes to New Horizons again. 

Back in November 2021, we got the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update which brought several new and exciting features to the game. Sadly, this was the last free major content update for Animal Crossing that we'll be getting, according to Nintendo.  

If you're missing island life, take a look at our games like Animal Crossing list to help fill that void New Horizons left. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.