The highly anticipated Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update has been released onto islands one day early, which means players can jump in right now.

Fans have heard right, update 3.0 is now live, extending Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The anticipated 3.0 update can be accessed by updating the title on the Nintendo Switch home screen, then jumping in as normal (players can start exploring the new content if Kapp’n has been unlocked). Unfortunately, those awaiting the Nintendo Switch 2 update will still have to wait until tomorrow. All new features are shown in the trailer below, in case you missed it.

The Animal Crossing: New Horizons updates were first announced last year, giving fans a welcome surprise after Nintendo had announced the 2.0 update would be the last update (and included content) to hit the game. The 3.0 update lets players visit a new hotel resort run by Kapp’n’s family that they can help decorate, new themed items and characters, exclusives like Slumber Island for Nintendo Switch Online members and more. Both the regular and Nintendo Switch 2 versions of the title can play this content update (tomorrow for Switch 2). Villagers with a Nintendo Switch Online membership can design and save up to three islands and play with friends online with those islands in Slumber Island.

The content update includes a range of new content for Villagers to explore, starting with quality-of-life improvements. Resetti is on hand in the new update with a convenient Reset Service to help tidy up player islands. Players can also now upgrade their home storage to hold up to 9,000 items, and storage can now hold trees, shrubs and flowers. The Nintendo Switch 2 version will include a built-in microphone, Game Chat, and support up to 12 players on any given island. Fans who own amiibo can also attract new Villagers to their islands with added amiibo support.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update 3.0 is out now, so fans can start decorating their hotels now. Nintendo Switch 2 owners will be able to jump in tomorrow.

Donkey Kong Bananza is down to $62.99 at Amazon right now, $7 off its original list price, and a 10% saving for those counting. That’s a pretty rare discount for a Nintendo game not that long after release, 6 months at most by my estimates.

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If you got your hands on a shiny new Nintendo Switch 2 last year, first of all, congrats, it's a wonderful console, and a whole lot of fun. Second, it is probably, unfortunately, already yelling at you about storage. The console ships with 256GB of onboard space, which sounds generous until you download a couple of chunky first-party games, dabble in a few third-party ports, and suddenly find yourself doing mental gymnastics over which titles you can afford to delete.

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This isn’t a Game of the Year list. It’s a look back at the games that lingered in my brain long after I stopped playing them — whether they were brilliant, deeply flawed, or simply hit me at the wrong (or very right) moment in 2025.

Switch 2 had some very strong months after release, selling a lot of copies. So much so that Nintendo adjusted its projected earnings for the next year just based on the sales performance of the Switch 2. But, weirdly enough, it seemed to slow down at the end of the year, from November to December. 

This is definitely unusual, as December is usually a strong month for console sales, as everyone is either buying or gifting them on Christmas. But that wasn’t the case for the Switch 2 this year. In fact, the sales were less than what the original Switch did in its release year. 

Switch 2 Sales Slow Down At The End Of The Year

According to Game Business, Switch 2 sales in the US during November and December were down a shocking 35% compared to the original Switch in its release year. Things weren’t better in the UK either, with about 16% less sales compared to the original Switch. Even in France, which is considered a strong market for Nintendo, the sales were 30% lower. 

Japan had a similar story, but the difference wasn’t as significant compared to other countries. The Switch 2 still had fewer sales in November and December in Japan than the Switch 1 in its release year, but the difference wasn’t as big.

However, the Switch 2 isn’t the only one suffering. According to US data tracker Circana, November has been the worst month in terms of console sales in the US since 1995. But because Switch 2 was the only main console released this year, the low sales hurt it more than others.

Thankfully, Switch 2’s early release days more than made up for this drop. The Switch 2 became the fastest-selling console this year with over 3.5 million units sold in four days after release. So, while the sales did suffer in November and December, the damage was a bit less because of the early success.

Despite the holiday dip, Nintendo isn’t necessarily in trouble; the console still posted strong first-year numbers overall, and its lifetime sales continue to grow. 

January is the month that, where I live, in the south of England, everyone gets serious again. All the paraphernalia of Christmas - all the merriment and cheer and colourful lighting - is cleared away in favour of sobering goals for the year ahead. It's never something that's appealed strongly to me, making goals, but I do feel the allure of wiping a slate clean and starting again. It's like a run in a roguelike game, I like to think. Time for a new me.

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Nintendo has announced two pastelly new Joy-Con 2 controller colours for Switch 2, and said they'll release next month.

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If you haven't been watching, Fallout Season 2 is pretty great and has been enjoying a good deal of success. So much so that Season 3 is already well into the writing stage. New games are sadly still a ways off, however, which is why both veteran and new players are flocking to Fallout 4 and other entries to go post-apocalyptic.

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Filming for the third season of Amazon's Fallout adaptation is kicking off sooner that we first expected.

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Troy Baker, one of the most well known actors working in video games, believes generative AI could have a positive effect overall on performing arts. Baker thinks it'll cause a reaction whereby people will seek out "authentic" experiences more - live shows, live theatre - and turn away from "gruel that gets distilled to me through a black mirror".

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Hitman developer IO Interactive has detailed the PC requirements for its upcoming James Bond origin story, 007 First Light.

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On its release back in 2023, Nintendo kept the Imprisoning War Sages from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. In fact, despite them playing a fairly key role in terms of the overall backstory, we only saw them in the game very briefly.

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Dataminers believe they've discovered more evidence that Monster Hunter Wilds could be coming to Nintendo Switch 2.

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Underrated 'slow life' role-playing game Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time - which stole a lot of my time last year on Switch 2 - has just received an exciting new year content drop.

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It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.

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2025 has gone by in a flash, hasn't it? Well, apart from the days I've spent tabulating all your Game of the Year votes and presenting the results here - that has felt like an eternity and I think has given me permanent neck pain. But, let's not worry about that. I'm sure you'll agree it was worth the sacrifice.

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If we're plotting out the year based on unexpected obsessions, mine were (in no particular order) weird Italian genre cinema of the 60s and 70s, an unhealthy appetite for unnecessarily elaborate physical media collector's editions, folk horror in literally any form I could consume, and, apparently, No Man's Sky. According to Steam's usual end-of-year thing, the exploratory space sim is by far my most played game of 2025, accounting for - somewhat incredibly - nearly 20 percent of my total playtime.

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I think these days, after years of Nintendo outright eschewing the console power rat race and focusing instead on different ways to play and honing their core craft, we forget that Nintendo is still a pretty sharp company in terms of technical innovation. Raw power went aside with the Wii, but the company's dedication to tinkering around the edges to create stand-out original experiences in other ways remained - or perhaps even intensified. There's been a lot of examples over the years, of course, from clever game design innovations to zany peripherals - but Donkey Kong Bananza has to be one of the finest showcases of that thinking from Nintendo in years.

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Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week it's not about what we've been playing, but what we hope to be playing on Christmas Day (you're reading this now, but we wrote this back in June or something as we plan ahead).

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Below are the latest Nintendo products that can be currently pre-ordered at retailers: United States Switch 2 Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition – January 15 – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon: Deluxe Edition – January 16 – Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade – January 22...

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