Switch 2 just got smoother, and Nintendo picked a suspiciously good time for a sale
A firmware update adds proper VRR for docked play, while a two-week discount event arrives right on cue to help you spend what you just saved.
Image: Nintendo
Nintendo has pushed out system update 23.0.0 for the Switch 2, and buried in the small print is the kind of fix that sounds dull until you notice how much better everything suddenly looks. The headline feature is variable refresh rate, or VRR, for docked play, which is a fancy way of saying that fast-moving scenes on your telly should stop doing that horrible tearing thing where the top half of the screen and the bottom half briefly disagree about what game you're playing.
If you've never noticed screen tearing, congratulations, you've been blessed with either a very calm temperament or a television that was already quietly working around it. For everyone else, docked mode on Switch 2 has occasionally looked like it was buffering even when nothing was buffering. This update should put a stop to that, provided your TV supports VRR too, which most decent sets from the last few years do.
What's actually changed
Update 23.0.0 turns on VRR for docked play, smoothing out frame pacing in supported games without you having to dig through a settings menu to switch anything on. It's the sort of improvement that doesn't come with fireworks or a trailer, it just makes things feel a bit more solid the next time you sit down for a session.
The sale bit
Nintendo has also opened a fortnight-long discount event, running until 26 September, with up to 30 per cent off a range of games and accessories. Worth flagging that this one has so far only been confirmed for the US, so if you're reading this from the UK, treat it as a nudge to keep an eye on your own eShop rather than a promise. We'll update this piece if the discounts turn up closer to home.
A patch that just makes the picture look better, no settings menu required. That's a good kind of update.
The bigger picture
All this lands the week after Nintendo's 40th anniversary Direct, which was mostly about a properly rebuilt version of Ocarina of Time arriving on 5 November, alongside some Zelda-themed hardware turning up on 29 October if that's your sort of thing. A second, more general Direct followed a day later, confirming Persona 6 is heading to Switch 2 and setting up one of the busiest release months the console has had yet, including a native remaster of The Witcher 3, which we've covered separately because eleven years on, it's still worth talking about.