What’s the deal with the Switch system update 7.0?

System update version 7.0 is now live.

Here’s the details from Nintendo:

• Select from six new New Super Mario Bros.™ U Deluxe icons for your user
• To edit your user icon, head to your My Page > Profile on the top left of the HOME menu
• Added additional language support to the HOME Menu for Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese
• To change the language, head to the System Settings > System > Language
• General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience

“Stability improvements” is a euphemism commonly used by both Sony and Nintendo instead of “patching bugs which are being exploited by hackers”.

Those familiar with semantic versioning might raise an eyebrow about this getting a major version bump, but Switch hacker SciresM thinks the changes he’s seen under the hood are enough to warrant it:

For people complaining about “no new changes”, 7.0.0 is actually definitely deserving of a major bump. Besides usual anti-hacker stuff, 7.0.0 has major API changes…new services and everything! They also seem to have turned on optimization flags(?) in a lot of sysmodules?

Point is, it’s not like N has spent months doing nothing but anti-hacker stuff then bumped the major version to meme on people. There’s what looks like big changes/additions at the OS API-level, probably to facilitate stuff for games/the OS in future updates.