Month: September 2019

The new Stephen King movie It: Chapter 2 wraps up the events of King’s writing but both star Bill Skarsgard and director Andy Muschietti believe there is more story to tell with a potential third movie.

Skarsgard, who plays Pennywise the clown, told Entertainment Weekly that he would come back to play the murderous villain again if the scriptwriters found an interesting story to tell. He suggested that it could be fascinating to examine what happened before the events of the first It movie. King himself didn’t write an It prequel, so this would be an all-new story.

“The book ends where the second movie ends, so that is the final chapter of this story,” Skarsgard said. “There is this interesting aspect of going back in time before all this happened. There might be a story there that might be worth exploring. Obviously that would be a story that’s not in the book, it would be a freestanding story, but obviously within the same universe. So, there might be something interesting out of it. I think it would be fun.”

Muschietti, meanwhile, told i09 that the It universe is actually a rich tapestry on which to tell more stories, given that its mythology goes back millions of years.

“Mythology is something that always has opportunities to explore,” he said. “It has been on Earth for millions of years. He’s been in contact with humans for hundreds of years, every 27 years. So you can imagine the amount of material.”

It is the name of a multi-dimensional evil that just happens to take the form of Pennywise the clown in King’s books and the movies. In theory, It could take numerous other, different forms.

“It’s always exciting to think of eventually exploring this mythology,” Muschietti added. “It’s very exciting. But, for now, there’s nothing on the table [for a third movie].”

It Chapter 2 opened in theatres on September 5 and it dominated the box office with $91 million in the US and Canada, and $94 million from international markets for a first-weekend total opening of $185 million. The It movie franchise is enormously successful, as parts 1 and 2 hold the records for the first and second largest-openings for horror movies in the history of cinema.

Given that, it makes sense that producers Warner Bros. would think about making a third movie someday. It Chapter 2 focused a lot on the “Deadlights,” which have some kind of connection to It and Pennywise, but the second movie did not expand on what they actually are apart from suggesting they may be Pennywise’s true form. This could theoretically be a an avenue that a prequel might explore, though this is only speculation. For now, however, nothing has been announced or confirmed.

For more on It Chapter 2, check out GameSpot’s review and extended coverage in the feature linked below.

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Microsoft’s next big game, Gears 5, is out now on Xbox One and PC. Following 2016’s Gears of War 4, it is developer The Coalition’s second brand-new Gears of War game since studio owner Microsoft bought the franchise in 2014 from Fortnite developer Epic Games. To get a closer look and deeper insight into the game and the franchise in general, GameSpot spoke with studio technical art director Colin Penty.

He spoke about a number of different topics, including the thinking behind Gears 5’s noticeably brighter colour scheme, the technical challenges of creating the most expansive and sprawling levels the Gears franchise has ever seen, and how The Coalition is now hitting its stride and gaining the confidence to take risks and try new things with the franchise following its run at Epic Games.

Penty also told us about how Gears 5 will perform on the OG Xbox One and Xbox One S, stating that its campaign will run at 30fps on the older machine just like Gears of War 4. That being said, Penty said The Coalition applied some technical wizardry to get more juice out of the older hardware through temporal upscaling. Additionally, the studio was able to achieve the smooth 60fps frame rate for all of the game’s multiplayer modes–Versus, Horde, and Escape–on the older Xbox hardware, which is something Penty said he is proud of.

On Xbox One X, Gears 5 runs at 1080p/60fps across campaign and all multiplayer modes. Penty said the team refused to compromise as it did with Gears of War 4. “We put a line in the sand early on in development of Gears 5 that we wanted the campaign to be 60fps on Xbox One X,” he said. “We didn’t want to have a compromise like Gears of War 4 where you had to choose 1080p/60fps or 4k/30fps. It was a large amount of work across a lot of disciplines to pull it off, but I really think it was worth it and is probably the best example of harnessing the additional power of the Xbox One X.”

Also on the subject of hardware, Penty said he is “definitely super excited” about the forthcoming release of Microsoft’s next-generation console, Project Scarlett, in Holiday 2020. “We don’t have anything to announce right now in terms of Gears with the new hardware–but I’m definitely super excited about what the new hardware could do. Having dedicated ray tracing cores is huge,” he said.

You can read the full interview below.

Gears 5 is available now on Xbox One and PC. You can buy the game outright or subscribe to Xbox Game Pass to get it at no extra cost. GameSpot’s Gears 5 review in progress currently scores the game a 7/10.

After playing some of Gears 5 I was immediately struck by the brighter colours, especially in the snow and the red sand. The Gears series is known for dark and grimy scenes, so can you talk about the art direction for Gears 5 and what you wanted to achieve? Was it a purposeful change to introduce brighter, more colourful environments?

Looking back, Gears of War 4 was a game that dominantly took place at night as that fit the tone better. While being still quite a colourful game it was also quite dark as a result. With Gears 5 we were excited to have gameplay levels that mostly took place during the day and that was definitely a deliberate decision. Having the majority of the game set during the day makes the game feel much brighter and compared to Gears 4 allows a lot of the vibrant colours to come through as a result. We also improved the HDR output tremendously from Gears of War 4 so the vibrancy of the image in HDR is amazing.

With Gears 5, you’re multiple entries into a franchise people know very well and have strong feelings toward. What were some of the challenges of staying true to the heart of the series as it relates to the art direction, but also pushing things forward and trying new approaches?

This is something our art director Aryan Hanbeck could probably answer better than myself. I will say that after shipping Gears: Ultimate Edition and also Gears of War 4 the Coalition art team has a pretty good feeling of when something “looks” like it belongs in the Gears universe or if it doesn’t. I think this frees us up to experiment with more confidence in Gears 5 and know that we will be able to keep the look authentic to Gears ultimately.

Moving on the subject of technology, Gears 5 is releasing about six years into the Xbox One’s life cycle. What kind of experience can people expect on the OG Xbox One hardware?

For the Xbox One and Xbox One S we were able to squeeze a bit more performance and quality out of the older hardware. Our campaign on Xbox One is running at 30fps just like Gears of War 4, but we were able to improve the image quality substantially in Gears 5 by using Temporal Upscaling – this way we always render at 1080p having a much sharper image, and only scale the “internal” resolution if needed for GPU performance. We also pushed to get Horde and Escape mode running at 60fps on Xbox One for Gears 5 so that way all of our MP modes are a consistent 60fps on Xbox One. I think gamers will appreciate that.

For Xbox One X, what kinds of things have you done under the hood to take advantage of the increased horsepower and speed of the console?

We put a line in the sand early on in development of Gears 5 that we wanted the campaign to be 60fps on Xbox One X. We didn’t want to have a compromise like Gears of War 4 where you had to choose 1080p/60fps or 4k/30fps. It was a large amount of work across a lot of disciplines to pull it off, but I really think it was worth it and is probably the best example of harnessing the additional power of the Xbox One X.

For multiplayer on Xbox One X we were able to introduce additional rendering features since we are running the same frame rate as Xbox One. We have screen space reflections and higher quality ambient occlusion as result.

Our cinematics also have much higher quality reflections, lens flares, depth of field, and motion blur on the Xbox One X compared to the original Xbox One and Xbox One S.

Gears of War 4 was released in 2016, and in terms of technology, that’s a long time. So what’s an example of something we’ll see in Gears 5 that maybe wasn’t possible technically last time around?

Being able to achieve more with technology is probably 50% the technology itself and 50% the teams ability to execute using that technology. So I think with Gears 5 certain things would fall into one or the other category. Something like Temporal Upscaling was technology that just didn’t really exist in a useable state in 2016. On the other hard large overworld levels in Gears 5 we wouldn’t have been able to pull off in Gears 4 from a technical stand point–partly because our team wasn’t quite ready to take something that complex on, and partly because some of the technology wasn’t quite ready yet. For example having dynamic shadows that can be seen for kilometers in the distance wasn’t something we were capable of in 2016 technologically while maintaining performance.

“We had to deal with a lot of technical challenges due to the larger worlds. Issues that were just minor annoyances in our linear levels became massive problem for our larger levels” — Colin Penty

Something else that I’m really proud of is the investment from our team in character materials, models, and facial animation systems in Gears 5. We created a dynamic iris caustic system that simulates light bouncing around the iris, as well as implemented proper sub-surface scattering on the eye and many other improvements. We cleaned up our facial wrinkle maps and blood flow tech to really make it sing with our skin material and facial animation. All of these improvements were mostly things we learned while finishing Gears of War 4 that we wouldn’t have been able to properly do without that experience doing 2016’s game.

One final example I can think of is our tessellation and cone step mapping technology – both of these weren’t really possible to a high level of quality–at least for us–in 2016. Employing these on Gears 5 allowed our materials to have a lot more depth and allowed us to do some pretty incredible snow and sand deformation around the players feet and from the skiff.

One of the most striking parts about Gears 5, at least in the amount I’ve played thus far, is that the levels are far bigger and more expansive. What were some of the technical challenges related to taking this approach? And on the other side, what opportunities does this present?

We had to deal with a lot of technical challenges due to the larger worlds. Issues that were just minor annoyances in our linear levels became massive problem for our larger levels such as streaming, memory, 60fps performance, snow and sand deformation, and visual pop-in. Opportunistically I actually think it forced us to make systems that were more scalable and robust than anything we would have normally built–thus helping us on our linear levels, split screen modes, and other SKU’s such as PC that could harness these new scalable systems.

The ambition of Gears 5 is immediately noticeable with its massive levels and more open-ended structure. What had to happen under the hood, technically, to allow this to happen?

We had to learn how to stream our game in a different way – we ended up splitting our streaming sections in the overworld levels into granular sub-components like “large, medium, small” so we could stream areas in at different speeds. We also had to get familiar with Unreal’s landscape system and train our art and design teams on how to get the most out of that system – then had to augment it a lot with some of Epic’s latest Unreal Engine work as well as some modifications of our own.

We abandoned baked shadows and go to a fully real-time shadowing system as we couldn’t afford to store kilometers of shadow map data on disk or in memory. Our shadows in the distance are real-time ray-traced. We focused on writing a sand and snow deformation system that did a proper displacement on the sand and snow when the player foot pressed into the ground.

“I’m definitely super excited about what the new hardware could do. Having dedicated ray tracing cores is huge.” — Colin Penty

We made the system persistent so the trails would stay for a long, long time. Finally, we wrote a paintable volume fog system that allowed the artists to paint fog in the world wherever they wanted it – this gives the overworlds a great sense of atmosphere while maintaining 60fps on Xbox One X.

A new Xbox, Scarlett, is coming in about a year. I’ve read that The Coalition plans to support Gears 5 for a very long time after release. I know you can’t talk about unreleased hardware, but at a high level, what are your thoughts on even more increased power with the new console in terms of what it will allow you to do technically, but also creatively?

We don’t have anything to announce right now in terms of Gears with the new hardware–but I’m definitely super excited about what the new hardware could do. Having dedicated ray tracing cores is huge.

On the multiplayer side, what are some of the technical innovations you’re implementing to make Gears 5 a top-notch multiplayer experience?

I’m probably most proud of being able to achieve 60fps on Xbox One and Xbox One X for Versus, Escape, and Horde. It really helps with playability and consistency. We also brought a lot of our campaign tech into our multiplayer maps–for example we use volume fog in some of our MP levels and some levels also use cone step mapping. Our MP levels always output at 1080p due to temporal upscaling and all outdoor MP levels use shadow cascades for dynamic crisp shadows, which is a big step up from Gears of War 4’s soft baked shadow maps.

With Gears 5, this is now The Coalition’s second brand-new Gears game after taking over the franchise from Epic. Do you feel you’re now hitting your stride and blazing your own trail?

I feel like we have more confidence with the franchise now and are more comfortable taking risks. I’m really happy with how we were able to add new gameplay elements like Jack and the overworlds and not break the core loop of what makes Gears feel like Gears.

I understand you’re also able to talk about the development of new and existing characters in Gears 5, so at a high level can you talk about Kait and her trajectory in this game?

Gears 5 is all about Kait’s journey and her discovering what is the nature of her connection to the swarm. I don’t want to spoil anything!

From what I’ve played so far, the relationships between the characters–old and new–are more nuanced and dynamic than ever. Can you talk about the kind of story you wanted to tell in Gears 5 and how you go about balancing and pacing a story with so many different characters and interwoven storylines?

Gears 5 is all about Kait’s story, but of course we also wanted to develop and flesh out the other characters as well. To get the pacing of the story correct it’s a lot of collaboration between Rod Ferguson our creative director, Matt Searcy our Campaign Director, Bonnie Jean Mah our Narrative Director, and Tom Bissell our writer to get the story and pacing correct throughout the campaign. It’s a delicate art!

After Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, a disappointing spin-off released in 2014, Borderlands 3 is a welcome return to form for the franchise. The game reunites fans with the core group of memorable main characters from the first two games and delivers the mayhem-heavy loot-shooter experience that the series is known for. Borderlands 3 carries forward many of the things that made the first two games special, but in doing so it also brings with it a few of the same stumbling blocks. There are noticeable improvements to the series formula, though, as Borderlands 3 provides additional freedom in how you want to play.

Set seven years after the events of Borderlands 2, Borderlands 3 wraps up most of the narratives established in the earlier games, while also teasing additional threads that could be explored in the future. Despite these hints, there’s a definite finality to Borderlands 3’s campaign, which satisfyingly wraps up the arcs of characters that fans have been following for 10 years.

As one of four fledgling Vault Hunters–Zane the operative, Amara the Siren, Moze the gunner, or FL4K the beastmaster–you are recruited into the Crimson Raiders, the militia that defends the only civilized pocket of society found on the bandit-filled wasteland planet of Pandora. Led by Lilith, a former Vault Hunter, the Crimson Raiders have gone to war with Tyreen Calypso and her twin brother Troy, who are using their influence as popular video streamers to convince their cult following to help them acquire the immense power found in secret vaults scattered throughout the universe. The story is a bit of a slow start, but it quickly picks up near the end of the first act and rarely slows down on its way to its grand finale. Looting and shooting are still the focus of Borderlands 3, but its campaign also delivers a fairly well-written story of sacrifice, the importance of family, and the responsibilities of heroes.

Borderlands 3 provides more flexibility than ever before to create the type of character you want. For the first time in the series, the Vault Hunters all have an active skill tied to each of their three respective skill trees. Amara, for example, can equip Phaseslam to deal immense close range damage, Phasecast to tear through enemies from afar, or Phasegrasp to crowd control or focus her elemental abilities on one target. Using perks from all three skill trees, you can evolve each of these skills in meaningful ways. For instance, if you want to make Amara’s area-of-effect Phaseslam ability into something more precise, you could change it with perks found in both the Brawl and Fist of the Elements skill trees so that the ability transforms Amara into a levitating spider-like creature that shoots a massive fire-based death ray before she careens to earth in a smaller slam. Phaseslam can evolve in other ways too, as can Phasecast and Phasegrasp–providing numerous options for how you want Amara to fight. The same can be said for Zane, Moze, and FL4K.

As a result, it’s pretty easy for both you and a friend to be playing as the same character but have completely different builds and roles on the battlefield. This added freedom also makes it far more feasible, and thus enjoyable, to play Borderlands 3’s campaign entirely solo in comparison to previous games in the franchise, as you’re not limited to established class restrictions based on your Vault Hunter choice. You obviously don’t have to go it alone–and Borderlands 3 actually makes co-op more rewarding thanks to an option that removes the need to compete for loot–but it’s nice knowing that if you want to, your experience will not be completely defined by the Vault Hunter you choose.

The freedom to build your ideal loadout extends beyond your Vault Hunter’s skill trees. Borderlands 3 makes clear-cut distinctions when it comes to the manufacturer of each gun. Before you even loot a new firearm, looking at which company made it will tell you most of what you need to know about what it can do. Maliwan guns are fairly weak but each one shoots elemental bullets, for instance, allowing you to more easily electrocute shields, melt armor, or burn through flesh, while a Hyperion firearm raises a forcefield in front of you while aiming down sights and becomes more accurate as you pull the trigger. They’re minor changes to further differentiate each type of gun, but these new manufacturer effects make it a lot easier to build specialized loadouts that can augment the perks you choose.

But, more than anything, the guns are just fun to shoot. It may come as little surprise given that distinctive firearms has been the bread and butter of the franchise since the beginning, but Borderlands 3 has quite a few unique guns that offer a wide variety of enjoyable effects. Some have actual gameplay-changing ramifications, like a sniper rifle that can transform into a shotgun. But Borderlands 3 also has guns that are just playfully quirky and weird–ones that insult and tease you for your performance or just shoot more guns, for example. And you acquire new firepower at a gratifying pace, with new loot regularly dropping from the tougher enemies in the groups you encounter and explosively erupting from bosses you defeat. Borderlands 3 never lets up on giving you new weapons to experiment with, progressively increasing the explosive potential and wacky effects of the weapons you find, which in turn serves as a satisfying visual representation of how much stronger you’re getting beyond the higher damage numbers.

Even without the loot, defeating enemies in combat is fulfilling. Shooting an unshielded enemy in the head rewards you with their cranium erupting in a satisfying blossom of blood and gore. When you don’t land that final headshot, enemies mostly go out with a final battle cry–ranging from pitiful cries for salvation to humorous insults–and the game doesn’t repeat lines often enough for them to grow stale. Combat is never dull as a result, with your chosen Vault Hunter shouting out funny or cool-sounding one-liners in the brief moments you’re reloading and making your way to your next victim.

As entertaining as Borderlands 3’s combat is, the fun that is found in the freedom to fight however you want is occasionally interrupted by the structure of boss battles, a traditional problem for the franchise. Many of the bosses look cool and have incredible theme music, but they all amount to the same strategy: shoot the weak spots, run from or jump over attacks, and repeat. You can cheat some by hiding in an unreachable corner and slowly chipping away at the boss’ weak spot, but that’s not much fun either as pretty much every boss in the game has a large healthpool and many of the later ones are bullet-sponges.

Borderlands 3’s late-game bosses pack a wallop with every attack too, downing you in a few hits if you’re not careful and thus demanding that you near-perfectly dodge for an extended period of time–which can drag on and feel boringly repetitive in the longest of these fights. So when you do encounter a boss in Borderlands 3, it typically grinds the mayhem-filled action to an abrupt halt as you’re forced to respond to the boss’ patterns by playing more slowly and carefully.

The new climbing and sliding moves do allow you to better navigate environments and thus get out of the way of certain attacks, but both mechanics are better suited for weaving among the scattered firefights with normal enemies, not the concentrated bombardment of the bosses. Several boss battles are frustratingly difficult to tackle on your own as a result, to the point that they all seem like repeated suggestions that you should be playing Borderlands 3 with at least one other person. Two or more players allows you to take turns reviving each other, making it easier to last longer. But simply trying to outlast one strong enemy doesn’t impart the same enjoyable impact of the mayhem-filled firefights from the rest of the game. You feel more like a badass running around and gunning down a vast assortment of different enemies than you do hiding behind cover and waiting for the boss to stop attacking you just so you can safely get a few shots off.

Thankfully, boss battles only make up a small part of Borderlands 3’s overall campaign. Most of the story sees you go up against the Calypsos’ seemingly never-ending cult of bandits or the armies of the twins’ corporate sponsors as you race to find the pieces of the keys to open up vaults across the universe. Your journey takes you far beyond the planet of Pandora, and it provides opportunities for new types of combat encounters in a series that has largely revolved around wide-open deserts full of bandits or factories full of robots. For example, the jungles of Eden-6 contain an assortment of dangerous wildlife that have different hunting grounds and patterns, and the low gravity of a Maliwan space station orbiting the planet of Promethea allows the elemental gunslinging corporate soldiers you’re going up against to jump higher and more easily attack you from above. Certain weapons have greater utility in certain environments as well, such as an explosive mushroom-like grenade that becomes more powerful when thrown into water. That’s easier to do more often in Eden-6’s swamps than Pandora’s sand dunes. Borderlands 3’s campaign sees you bouncing back and forth between planets every few hours, which keeps each setting from growing stale while also encouraging you to keep adopting new playstyles, strategies, and weapons.

Borderlands’ heroes are nothing if not personable, and that trend continues in this latest installment–transforming the motley crew of outlaws into a family you feel a kinship with.

Even if Borderlands 3 takes you far beyond the scope of Pandora and sees you meet brand-new allies and encounter never-before-seen threats, the original cast of characters that have defined the adventures from the beginning are still at the forefront, and the story is better for it. Whether you’re a long-time fan or not, it’s the connection to the Crimson Raiders that acts as your motivation for fighting through the campaign. Borderlands’ heroes are nothing if not personable, and that trend continues in this latest installment–transforming the motley crew of outlaws into a family you feel a kinship with. Your connection to the Crimson Raiders continues to grow with every mission as well, as–thanks to the spaceship Sanctuary III–the entire group is with you throughout the course of your journey.

Newcomer Tyreen is clearly a bad person, but the campaign’s story never gives you a compelling reason as to why you would want to kill her so as to stop her for good. Lilith is fond of reminding you that Tyreen’s plans would ultimately destroy Pandora, but Borderlands 3 introduces a bunch of planets that would make for more preferable homes. Tyreen, and thus Troy, never amounts to a credible threat that you feel like you need to stop as a result, so the Calypso twins instead feel like the primary source of much of Borderlands 3’s comic relief, not villains that must be stopped.

With most of the franchise’s juvenile humor and ludicrous jokes coming from your planetside interactions with the Calypsos, it’s on Sanctuary III with your crew that Borderlands 3’s well-written story delves into its more heartfelt and emotional moments. The game wastes little time reintroducing you to mainstays Lilith and Patricia Tannis, a brilliant yet socially anxious scientist, and building the drama of its narrative around them as the two women grow into their new roles within the Crimson Raiders. Tannis’ evolution is especially compelling as you see her make courageous strides to move beyond the self-imposed limitations she’s set for herself on account of her autism and social anxiety. For two characters that were popular but little more than caricatures in the first game, it’s rewarding to see the growth the two underwent in Borderlands 2 now culminate into two leaders that you’re willing to follow to the end.

That isn’t to say the other fan-favorite characters have been left out. Pretty much everyone from the previous games returns to complete their respective arcs. Borderlands 3 weaves in plenty of memorable new characters as well–such as the coffee-obsessed Lorelei, artificial intelligence BALEX, and scoundrel turned rebel general Clay–but the game’s story is very much the fulfilling conclusion that long-time fans have been looking forward to for the franchise’s mainstays.

And what a conclusion it is. Borderlands 3 has a few stumbling blocks when it comes to bosses, but these fights are overshadowed by the game’s rewarding gunplay and over-the-top humor. The game’s character-driven narrative acts as a satisfying finale for the loot-shooter franchise, and the new mechanics and features–especially the reworked skill trees and weapon manufacturer effects–give you plenty of agency in how you want to play through it. If you’ve never been a fan of the franchise, it’s unlikely Borderlands 3 does enough things differently to change your mind, as the game best excels at continuing what the series has always done: deliver a humorous tall tale of misfits looting and shooting their way to heroism.

The latest firmware update for Nintendo Switch has arrived, and it includes a number of new features, tweaks, changes, and fixes. Version 9.0.0. (released September 9) introduces a new search feature for the News channel, a new QR code option to sign in to your Nintendo Account, and new touch screen sensitivity settings. The update also introduces the ability stop the Switch from recognizing inputs from the console’s buttons, except for the Capture and Home buttons. This only applies to the newly released Switch lite.

Additionally, the new Switch 9.0.0 update adds a section to account pages for “Online Play Invites,” and as it’s name suggests, this is where you’ll see invites from friends for supported games. Finally, the new patch fixes what sounds like a very serious issue. Apparently, there was a bug that completely prevented Fire Emblem: Three Houses from booting at all, instead returning an error. This problem has been fixed with the update through general system and stability improvements, Nintendo said.

This issue was reportedly affecting those who purchased the Three Houses season pass recently, though it’s unclear how widespread the issue was or if anything else could trigger it. Whatever the case, it’s fixed now.

You can see the full 9.0.0 update notes below, as posted on Nintendo’s website.

Nintendo Switch Firmware 9.0.0 (September 9, 2019) Update:

• Added a search feature for the News Channel.
  • Channels can be searched using filters or free text.
• Added “Display QR Code to Check In” to User Settings.
  • You can display a QR Code on-screen to check in using your Nintendo Account.
• Alarm Notifications have been added to System Settings > Notifications.
  • You can check or delete pre-set alarms.
  • Alarms can be set up only within supported software (to be added at a later time).
  • A controller firmware update may be required to use this feature.
• You can now configure touch screen sensitivity settings.
  • Select between Standard and Stylus sensitivity (optimized for stylus input).
• Added the option to turn on/off the system button input (Nintendo Switch Lite only).
  • When this setting is turned off the system no longer receives input from the console buttons, with the exception of the Capture and HOME Buttons, and can only be operated from a wirelessly paired controller (sold separately).
  • This setting is on by default and can only be turned off if a compatible controller (sold separately) is wirelessly paired to the console.
  • The setting will automatically turn back on when the console is restarted or after returning from sleep mode.
• Added “Online Play Invites” section to the User’s page.
  • Invites from friends to join online play in supported software will be displayed in this section.
• General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience.
  • Resolved an issue where some users can’t start the Fire Emblem: Three Houses game, and get an error instead.