Animal Crossing for the Switch was revealed officially as Animal Crossing: New Horizons during Nintendo E3 Direct. The game looks great with a holiday island theme, but some were left disappointed when it was revealed the game would be pushed from 2019 to March 2020. Thankfully this seems to be just because the studio needs more time and Nintendo doesn’t want them crunching to get it done for 2019.
Nintendo Delays ‘Animal Cross: New Horizons’, Doesn’t Promote Crunch
Speaking to Tina Amini at IGN, the newly appointed Nintendo President of America, Doug Bowser, explained that Nintendo doesn’t want to promote a crunch culture.
“For us, one of our key tenets is that we bring smiles to people’s faces, and we talk about that all the time. It’s our vision. Or our mission, I should say. For us, that applies to our own employees. We need to make sure that our employees have a good work-life balance.”
It’s always great to see someone in a position like Bowser speak about crunch culture like this even if it’s not the most hard-hitting quote. But when talking about Animal Crossing he did say that they simply won’t release a game if it’s not done, and that means not crunching to get it there.
“One of those examples is, we will not bring a game to market before it’s ready. We just talked about one example (Animal Crossing). It’s really important that we have that balance in our world. It’s actually something we’re proud of.”
During the Nintendo Playhouse Live, Animal Crossing: New Horizon did get multiplayer confirmed for up to four players could play locally on a single console, or up to eighty when playing online. Much like past entries, you won’t be able to build a tent on your friends’ island though.
The game looks really beautiful and I can’t wait to learn more leading up to the release. You can watch the full Treehouse Live below to get excited now though.
