The hotly anticipated Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been having a bit of a rough week. This past week, the news emerged that you could only have a single island per Switch console, regardless of how many copies of the game you own. Following on the heels of that information is now the possibility that you won't be able to transfer that single island between systems, either.

A possible leaked image of the rear cover for the German version of Animal Crossing: New Horizons appears to tell costumers that the game's data can't be transferred between multiple systems. This, when paired with the previous announcement that the game won't support Nintendo's Cloud Backups service, means that you will need to pick wisely with which system you play it on. The real bummer is that if/when Nintendo releases an improved Switch Pro-like device, which won't be this year, you would have to start all over with a brand new island. All of your animal pals will be marooned on the system they were created on.

 

While I appreciate the fact that you can have 8 users on your Switch console all use the same island, I still feel for the families with multiple children (and parents) that want their own island. I know that if I was little, there is no way I would want to share an island with my older brother. If this translation is accurate, it's a shame that even with the size that micro SD cards can reach now, that additional islands couldn't simply be stored on them. Allowing each person to just have to buy their own SD card to have their own islands on to take with them would make way more sense. It worked for the GameCube version of Animal Crossing, after all. Remember how that came bundled in with its own memory card, just for that reason?

There is still a lot we don't know about the game, so perhaps this will turn out to be a whole lot of smoke with no fire behind it. Do I think this latest drama will affect the sales of New Horizons? No, not really. There has yet to be any official word from Nintendo, as such this should still be taken as just a rumor.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons will release on the Nintendo Switch next month on March 20, 2020.