Animal Crossing: New Horizons drops surprise update, in the year of our lord 2025

Believe it or not, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons just got a surprise update, its first one since 2022.

Between its release in 2020 and its final content patch two years later, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was regularly kept fed with a stream of new content.

Some fans were unhappy at some of the removed content from previous games, and so Nintendo began slowly adding them back in further updates over the game’s lifetime.

Ahead of the Nintendo Switch 2 release next week, a new update is now available for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. However, don’t get your hopes up too much.

The patch notes for this update only has one line, simply reading: “Improved the compatibility for multiplayer sessions between Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch.”

So it’s not really a reason to boot up your island again or anything, but it does mean the game should run well on the Switch 2 without any compatibility issues.

With the Switch 2 just around the corner, it’s important for Nintendo to maintain the stability of one of its most popular games.

This should ensure it’ll run well on Switch 2 systems, while also not misbehaving if you’re playing cross-platform with your friends on last-gen Switches.

As the second bestselling Switch game of all time, it’s important for Nintendo to make sure Animal Crossing: New Horizons runs smoothly without a hitch.

Nintendo has released a similar update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Switch’s biggest seller, and it’s to be expected that other online games may receive a similar treatment.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold an estimate of 47.82 million copies in its lifetime, with the lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic playing a huge role in its popularity.

Its sales come second only to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has sold 68.2 million copies since 2017.

The Nintendo Switch 2 releases next week, on 5 June.