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As the first full free-to-play experiment from Nintendo, Steel Diver: Sub Wars can be considered a reasonable success. We certainly feel that it shows that Nintendo can make free-to-play work, and it provides some competitive online play at a fairly relaxed pace, emphasizing strategy over an itchy trigger finger.

Although it has a single player campaign the focus for many is likely to be with online play, so it's natural that Nintendo will make adjustments to improve balancing and performance. That's certainly the purpose of the latest update, which tackles some reliability issues and seeks to improve balancing. Gamers in Europe and North America should be prompted to visit the eShop for the update while trying to load the game, with the European version requiring just 82 blocks of space. Below is the change log from Nintendo of America, which covers the same tweaks as those in Europe.

  • Morse-code chat has been closed under Internet Mode. Users can continue to enjoy lobbies and Morse-code chat during Random Battles and Matched-Skills Battles.
  • Minor changes to Morse-code chat functionality have been made:
    The duration of chat in a lobby has been cut from two minutes to one minute
    A three second time interval has been set for Morse-code signals
  • Overall stability improvements to the online modes have been made to minimize communication errors during online play
  • Fixed an issue where a user’s sequential wins were interrupted due to communication errors during online play
  • Adjustments have been made to the specs of some submarines to further improve the game’s balance

The download's available now — let us know what you think of the shortened lobby wait times and loss of the morse code chat room (not the in-battle morse code as we originally stated).

Thanks to Mark for the heads up.