Animal Crossing On Switch 2 Has Me Equal Parts Buzzing And Baffled

I adore Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I know, I know, such a hot take puts me in a niche of… about 98% of people that read this site, but what I mean to say is that when the announcement of Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and the 3.0 update were announced yesterday, I was about as excited as Blathers when you deliver him a fourth Fossil in one day. That’s very excited.

I spent the evening grinning about the return of Sonny Resetti, the Mineru Villager (!!), all of the design potential that comes with the Hotel Resort, and bulk crafting! I was even pretty pleased with the Switch 2-specific features like Mouse Mode and GameChat, perhaps not quite as big as the additions that the 3.0 update will provide, but a nice little bonus for four quid.

But then, as I settled into bed after an evening of counting the days until 15th January (77 today, for those interested), I was met with a little pang of worry. “If the New Horizons Switch 2 Edition is arriving with this much pomp,” I thought to myself, “it’s going to be years until we get a new Animal Crossing!”

This isn’t to say I’m particularly keen to move on from New Horizons — if those lockdown months taught me anything, it was that I could play this game forever (given the time) — but I realised that a lot of my Switch 2 excitement was built on seeing what comes next. I’ve already played New Horizons, and no amount of home storage expansion is going to feel as fresh as a new entry.

I’m starting to see the Nintendo Switch 2 Editions as a big ol’ placeholder in Nintendo’s release schedule. It’s one of those ‘we’re not quite ready to show you what’s next, so here’s something familiar to keep you busy in the meantime’ moments that we’re becoming increasingly well acquainted with. Surely a brand new game would be a much better prospect for console sales?

It was a similar story on Switch. Rather than give us a new Mario Kart, we got Mario Kart 8 Deluxe; instead of a new 3D Mario, we got Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. They’re great games, no doubt, but they’re also a telltale sign of ‘you’re years away from a new entry, mate’.

And I don’t want that for Animal Crossing. New Horizons launched over five years ago *gulp*, and while that’s hardly a long wait between series entries, the arrival of the Switch 2 Edition makes me think that Nintendo could easily make us wait another five.Throw in some unexpected content updates a few years down the line to sweeten the deal, à la MK8D’s Booster Course Pass, and we might end up waiting even longer, forever convinced that the 2020 game is delivering something new.

I have no idea where we go next after New Horizons, but I thought the same thing after New Leaf, and look where that left us! All the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition does is delay the next entry. I’ll jump back into ACNH and have a wonderful time doing so, but it won’t capture the magic of terraforming your island the first time, will it?

More pressingly, putting my industry cap on for a second, Animal Crossing is a system seller. Unless Nintendo has another global pandemic up its sleeve, I can’t imagine that a new series entry would hit the 48 million sales that New Horizons mustered, but people would flock to it, all the same. In a launch year that’s been criticised for its re-releases, wouldn’t ‘Animal Crossing: Newer Horizons’ be the big push to go out and nab a Switch 2?

It all feels like many of the same concerns that I’ve had with the console in general these past few months. I think the year-one lineup is fantastic, but I’m fortunate because I like most of the games that are getting re-released. No amount of graphical upgrades or Mouse Mode inclusions can overshadow the fact that these are games that I, and many other people, have played before, some of them just a few years ago.

Of course, this is how console launches work these days, and compared to the Xbox Series or the PS5, the Switch 2 is already off to a flying start as far as its software is concerned.

I also need to remind myself that the past four months haven’t been wall-to-wall NS2 Editions. In terms of exclusives, we’ve had Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza and Drag x Drive. Kirby Air Riders and Hyrule Warriors are right around the corner, then we’ve got new Switch 2 entries for Mario Tennis, Yoshi, Splatoon, Pokémon and Fire Emblem already lined up for 2026. You compare that to the PS5’s exclusives list for its first couple of years, and it’s a firm reminder that we’re eating good!

But I think we’re still missing the real big hitter. The Switch 2 Editions of BOTW and TOTK seemed like a fair stand-in for a new entry in that series (we have had two newbies in the past two years, to be fair), Donkey Kong Bananza feels like the obvious substitute for a 3D Mario, and Mario Wonder + Meetup in Bellabel Park will have us covered on the 2D front soon enough, too.

I was hoping that Animal Crossing would be the biggie to make everyone go, “Yes, now I need a Switch 2″, but I fear that January’s re-release is a sign that we still have a long wait ahead of us before we can see what Newer Horizons will look like.