New Switch and Switch 2 system update adds eShop gifting

A new system firmware update for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 has been released today, and it brings with it a huge new feature: digital game gifting.

Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 system update 23.5.0 includes preparatory data for an upcoming feature on the Nintendo eShop that will allow users to send “Nintendo eShop products” as gifts to each other. This new gifting feature will launch officially on November 17, 2026 – a week from now – and will be restricted to players within a person’s family group. This means you won’t be able to send a game to a random person, which makes sense really, given somebody could steal your console and send themselves a bunch of gifts.

Still, any gifting at all is a huge step, and a rarity in the digital game store space. Previously, if you wanted to gift a Switch game to a friend, you’d need to either buy a physical game and hand it to them in person, or buy them eShop credit and hope they actually spend it on what you intended. We don’t yet have full details on how gifting is set to work on the Switch and Switch 2, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it next week to see how it works.

The new update also adds more support for Portuguese language (the Portuguese kind, not the Brazilian kind), as well as adds the option to configure accessibility settings during the console’s first-time setup.

You can see the full 23.5.0 patch notes below, courtesy of Nintendo.

Ver. 23.5.0 (Released November 9, 2026)

• Added the ability to configure accessibility settings during first-time setup.
  • Information on these accessibility settings can be found in Nintendo Switch 2 first-time setup.
• Added support for an upcoming feature to allow gifting of Nintendo eShop products to a Nintendo Account family group member.
  • This gifting feature will be available after a Nintendo eShop update, scheduled for November 17, 2026. 
• The following updates have been made in Accessibility in System Settings:
  • Added Portuguese (Portugal) to “Text to Speech” languages.
  • Added Portuguese (Portugal) to the GameChat “Convert Text to Speech” languages.
• General adjustments and fixes were made to improve the user experience.

Tags: eShop news Follow Vooks on Google Add us as a preferred source to see more Vooks stories in Search Add source