Opinion: Nintendo Shouldn’t Drop Animal Crossing: New Horizons Support

On Nintendo’s latest announcement for Animal Crossing: New Horizons including update 2.0 and the paid DLC Happy Home Paradise, Nintendo announced that it would be the game’s last major content update, and I sincerely wish this wasn’t the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand dropping the idea of major free content updates for games, sometimes things have to come to an end. But my wish lies on the idea that Nintendo wouldn’t drop the Animal Crossing: New Horizons support just yet.

I’m a big advocate for DLC. Of course, there is a limit as to how much patience I’ll have with what each company dictates as “DLC,” but big content updates that you have to pay an extra amount of money for I’m all in for - getting more of a game I love is something I’ll always advocate for.

I don’t play Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I delved into the game when quarantine was at its highest and I did have some fun times with it. However, the game really wasn’t for me when the dialogue quickly became repetitive and it felt like most of the villagers were lacking personality. One game I did play quite a lot of was Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and this is where the basis for my argument stems from.

You see, New Leaf was released all the way back on the 8th of November, 2012, and New Horizons dropped on the 20th of March, eight years later. The amount of things that New Horizons innovated from its prequel was astounding. We could put furniture outside, we had these daily quests that had us coming back, it truly felt like the game had done wonders by the franchise. But, it was missing a lot from New Leaf, too. Villagers previously had more lines to them, and I actively spoke to them for several weeks before they began repeating too much dialogue. Not only that, they asked me for favours that truly let me interact with them to a way deeper degree.

For all of its flaws, New Leaf had a lot of great things too. And I wished that New Horizons would only further innovate, not begin taking things away. Alas, we know that the game did have its downfalls that led to several outrages from the community. And when I heard the game would be getting paid DLC to be able to further expand it into a better version, I was ecstatic.

Waiting for eight years to get a new game that repeats dialogue very early on and limits your interactions with villagers because… well they don’t really do much at all, feels bad. Nintendo has a habit of not releasing many games for their great franchises for long periods of time. You need not look further than the fact that there aren’t any new 3D Mario games in the making, and we’re fast approaching Super Mario Odyssey’s fourth anniversary. Or the fact that the last Zelda game to follow the original formula was 2011’s Skyward Sword.

Nintendo had the perfect opportunity to support a game for a long period of time and give it content updates in the form of paid DLC to make something that feels long-lasting. New Horizons felt like the perfect way to capitalise on this, especially after the release of the Mario furniture. How cool would it be for Animal Crossing: New Horizons to get DLC that truly betters it throughout the years, until a new mainline game can be made for the franchise? Getting special events dedicated to each of their game’s releases, we need not look further than Metroid Dread, and make an event relating to that. Give us Samus’ armor, or give us back the metroid furniture that was available in New Leaf.

Do you know how many people would pay for a DLC for Yoshi villagers? Or bringing back old favourites in DLC packs? Creating villagers of Donkey Kong, or Diddy Kong? There’s a multitude of things that Nintendo can do to innovate their Animal Crossing franchise, with IPs spanning almost to the dozens, and each of them a goldmine for fellow lovers of both the Animal Crossing franchise and whatever crossover they decide to do.

The worst part? Nintendo has proven they can continuously support a game through the years. Look no further than Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which has been blessed with continuous support for almost four years now, with a community that still interacts widely through Discord chats and even dedicated data miners trying to figure out what is coming in the following month. And this is from a game that is using the DS models, the clothes don’t have sleeves, and has a slew of problems that could be fixed if Nintendo just tried.

With companies like EA supporting their games for years after release, with The Sims 4 still getting DLC to this day, despite it being a seven-year old game, I don’t see why Nintendo couldn’t pull off a stunt very similar to that. Celebrating Breath of the Wild’s sequel by returning old villagers like Epona, Medli, Ganon, and Wolf Link. Or even making new ones.

Nintendo is sitting on a gold mine of content and possibility, and they for some reason refuse to capitalise on it.