Nintendo Switch Owners Are Getting A Sad Surprise One Year After Launch

Unless you've been living under a rock, you likely know that tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the Nintendo Switch's launch. It's a pretty exciting time to be a Switch owner as we head into this second year and see what Nintendo does to keep the audience that has sprouted up around the Switch interested. For some, however, this anniversary is coming with a small but frustrating issue.

The Switch, as many owners are aware, tracks total playtime for each profile on the console. By heading into your profile page, you can see how long you've played each game in your library, along with the last time you played them. This is a nifty little feature that doesn't serve any real purpose but giving some owners a feeling of pride when they look back on the time they've spent playing their games.

However, some users are discovering that as the one-year anniversary arrives, their playtime data is being deleted from their consoles. Specifically, ResetEra users who purchased a Switch on launch day are noticing that their data for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – a game that released alongside the Switch – is being reset as the clock rolls over to March 3.

Other games that were first played after March 3 aren't affected by this, so it would seem that the Switch is only capable of storing a year's worth of playtime data per game. Obviously, your actual saves remain intact, so there's no real worry on that front, but this is an annoying realization for those who liked being able to see how much time they've racked up playing their Switch games.

It's unknown if this is just an oversight on Nintendo's part or if it was a planned feature, but either way, there are some Switch users who aren't pleased with how this whole thing is playing out. We'll see if Nintendo says anything about this (admittedly minor) problem, but for now, those of you with a Switch that's about to turn one year old might want to take a few screenshots of your profile if you want to save your playtime data.