NBA Playgrounds on Nintendo Switch has been due a big update for months and, happily, it has now arrived - although not as a simple patch.

NBA Playgrounds (left) and NBA Playgrounds: Enhanced Edition (right).

To get NBA Playgrounds' latest version you'll need to download a fresh edition of the whole game, which has been re-released as NBA Playgrounds: Enhanced Edition.

As spotted by Ars Technica, the entirely separate game requires existing owners to delete the original NBA Playgrounds and then head to the eShop to download the new version.

The store page for the original NBA Playgrounds release has now disappeared, so when you delete the original you won't get it back. You should, however, keep your save data.

For existing owners, the Enhanced Edition will be "permanently free", Nintendo's weekly eShop releases bulletin confirmed last week.

But why the launch of a whole new version of the game? There's no clear answer.

Oddly, there has been no official announcement of the Enhanced Edition from developer Saber Interactive, or instruction for existing owners that they should go and manually upgrade.

Ars Technica speculated it may be something to do with the addition of a $10 DLC to unlock more NBA players and courts, as a way of avoiding the game's controversial loot box unlock system.

Last summer, Saber mentioned elements of this planned update were "out of normal Nintendo guidelines" and in its most recent update, from last October, it mentioned a "radical solution" to update the game as adding new content had been "more complicated than we thought".

We've asked Saber for comment.