We’re roughly a month away from the launch of a new Animal Crossing game, but there’s a problem that’s been cheesing off the fanbase ever since it was revealed. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons save transfer policy has a lot of people upset — and that’s not the only problem with the game.
Twitter account @ACPocketNews highlighted some of the fine print about this upcoming game from the Nintendo UK eShop. Suffice it to say, these details have fans a little bit upset.
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Here’s what the fine print says:
Important notes regarding save data
• This game does not support the Save Data Cloud functionality of Nintendo Switch Online. However, the ability to recover Animal Crossing: New Horizons save data from the server in the event of console failure, loss or theft will be available to Nintendo Switch Online members sometime in the future.
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons does not support the ability to transfer your save file from one Nintendo Switch console to another.
Up to 8 players registered as users on a Nintendo Switch console can live on one shared island, and up to four residents of one island can play simultaneously on one console. Please note: only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch console, irrespective of the number of users registered to or copies of the game used on one console. One Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island.
Alternatively, up to eight people can play together on one island via local wireless or online play.
The problems boil down to two key points noted in the text above: the Animal Crossing: New Horizons save transfer policy and the limit of one island per Nintendo Switch console.
“[I] really, REALLY hope [Nintendo] fixes the issue with the inability to transfer your new horizons save from your old switch to a new one in a future patch[.] [Like,] this is just unacceptable[,] how they can’t even do a simple thing like that[?]” read one tweet.
Adding to the confusion is contradictory information reportedly given out by Nintendo of America support which says that they “may be able” to transfer the data between two consoles:
So, I contacted NoA support and according to them local save data transfer will work as usual? It may be that they don't have confirmation on how it'll work yet, but if that is the case it's absolutely baffling. They seriously need to clear this up pic.twitter.com/WVaocZfyAr
— Badlands Angel Zero (@Zero_RVL) February 7, 2020
The outrage extends elsewhere on the Internet, with one Reddit submission succinctly describing the problem in its opening sentence.
“Seems [Nintendo] really want you to lose your save somewhere along the way,” the Reddit submission by /u/MashiroAnnaMaria stated. “No cloud saves and now it appears you won’t be able to transfer your saves along with a system transfer. [Meaning] your save will forever be stuck on the system you start it on. This is a huge deal, even more so since we don’t have cloud saves.”
“[Not] transferring to another switch? [Frick.] [As] an owner of the [OG] switch – which is still running smoothly luckily, despite some battery life – who wants to upgrade in a few years maybe when a switch pro or whatever it‘ll be will be announced, it‘s heartbreaking to know that [I] possibly won‘t be able to transfer my island of 500+ hours onto it,” stated a comment in that same thread.”
The uncertainty behind the Animal Crossing: New Horizons save transfer policy and the lack of cloud saves seems like a strange issue to be having in 2020, especially for the franchise’s first release on a mainline Nintendo console. Hopefully, Nintendo will be able to figure out how to make this work sooner rather than later.
