Animal Crossing: New Horizons Will Support Save File Transfers "Later This Year"

Sounds like they are l i s t e n i n g

So, crisis averted right? Or are folk still crazy?

@GrailUK I mean, I'm satisfied other than the fact that it took them this long to manage. It'll still peeve some people who want to play on both a Lite and a Standard but...

Finally. Now I don't have to worry about starting up my ACNH island on my 2017 Switch and have it stuck on that system. This is definitely a game I wanted to go back and forth playing on my Switch and Switch lite.

It was never a problem for me with New Leaf or even back when cloud saves weren't a thing. Unless you're really super unlucky you probably shouldn't worry too much. At least they still gave the option.

Not to defend Nintendo or anything but I'm assuming since they're taking the time and effort (and money) to develop something like this (as well as the one-time recovery thing) then they really must've done some testing with regards to re-rolling your saves over and over. I'm sure someone has a counter argument for this, but still.

Thank goodness, I can imagine how angry (myself included) consumers were that this was tied to a paid subscription service when of course it should be free.

I still have one question about multiple accounts.
If i have another accounts on my Switch, can i create another Save Data from different account ?
I want to have multiple different Island with different villagers, different map, different fates. I can have multiple towns on 3DS version by purchasing another same copies again. 😁

@Anti-Matter Nope, one island per console.

Well this is good, because if they did decide they were going to make a Switch Pro after all then I wasn’t going to buy it for fear of losing possibly hundreds of hours of time I could potentially put into my island.

@JesWood13
So, still same as ACNL, eh ?

Take your time Nintendo, I'll be playing Animal Crossing while your hard at work. Nintendo really did an amazing job with this game, it looks to be the greatest game of all time, I can't wait.

im still worried if this feature is gonna be region dependent, im in the philippines and i dunno how contacting them about something like this even works

Not available on launch, not a complete game. Not worth my money. Sorry, but not gonna support games that are unfinished. There are plenty that do that already.

I am super eager to play this game. But since the game was already delayed for quite some time, I do find it odd that this will not be in the game from day 1.

I am very glad that they will support save transfers at all however. As someone who went through... more 3DS units than he should have... I would be worried if my save was locked to a single system.

Also gonna go out on a limb and suggest someone in Nintendo went to the team working on ACNH and said "Yo, we've got an upgraded Switch planned in the not-so-distant future, you gotta make transfers possible or you'll hurt sales!"

The fact that you can transfer save data is huge, now I won't have to worry about getting the Switch Pro, if it happens to exist.

Well I will save my money for Doom Eternal, you made it simple for me Nintendo!👏🏼

That's good, at least. I hope they revise the save data backup to more than once in a lifetime, too.

Just allow me to easily play on both my OG Switch and the Switch Lite - achieved by implementing a convenient method of transferring my save file from one system to another - and I'm good.

Finallyyyy. It's not perfect, but at least it's something to ease the anxiety I was having about my town being stuck on a device that may be replaced in the future.

Hopefully these don’t take up resources in the Animal crossing dev team (Instead it should be the switch cloud team), because I would much rather prefer content than transfers

Putting in my pre-order.
Still a bit bemused by all this hassle - it seems a lot of grief all because Nintendo is paranoid about people duplicating items. I must be missing why that is such a big issue in a game like this
Duplication would happen anyway and doesn't really seem to give any significant advantage that I can see.

Thank you! This was a perplexing issue for me, even more so than the cloud save debacle. Maybe I’ll be getting a Lite after all!

Nope. This just became more convoluted. The entire rollout of AC is leaving too many open ended questions.

Am I the only one who thinks that the reason they’re having trouble with the system transfer for this particular save data is because it’s possible for it to be “owned” by 8 different profiles? It probably has some weird things going on in the code to make that happen.

@GrailUK look below you. Very little has changed.

@Wilforce I don't think it is that complicated. They wanted to completely disable the ability to copy saves to avoid cheating and they also have to handle the saves differently because one save is shared between different accounts on the same Switch.

After the fan backlash they changed their mind but don't have enough time now to implement it at launch, because they can't use the standard implementation that is already available.

@Zyph It was a little bit different in the past. On the DS and 3DS saves were stored on the cartridge which is less likely to break than the console itself. On the WiiU you could store saves on external hard drives. But on the Switch they are locked inside the internal memory of the console.

@countzero Good point

I still don't get why they are trying so hard to block possible exploits with that save file. It is not as if the game will have micro transactions and lootboxes... Is it???

@cptspaulding You won the Greatest Moaning Comment 2020 Award! Congrats!

@countzero I didn't say complicated, I said convoluted. They're different words and while similar are not interchangeable. Convoluted means extremely complex or difficult to follow, which Nintendo has changed the narrative multiple times over the past few months and has obfuscated the functionality of this by disclosing portions of the policy in fine print during the Direct. By implementing a one-time use function, Nintendo demonstrates that it will be possible (following an update) to restore the save, but hasn't justified why it's possible only once, which fans in the community have already posed better solutions - why not once a year like is done with remote deactivations of a primary Switch? Which who's to say Nintendo won't come back three months from now and change the narrative again.

That's the European sites, the American site still says, at the bottom, in small font, "Animal Crossing: New Horizons does not support the ability to transfer your save file from one Nintendo Switch system to another." Maybe Europe is getting a different treatment?

@GrailUK You're far too optimistic. This is the Internet, after all, where controversy lurks around every corner, under every bed...

@Cosats Well, I'll take it and champion the honour! Lol

Hey ma, I won an award! REMEMBER WHEN YOU SAID I WOULDN'T WIN ANYTHING?

Good job, Nintendo. Don't want to ruin the integrity of competitive Animal Crossing, ya know?

Considering 30% of Switch owners also own a Lite it's a shame there is no way to play the game on the same account across systems, this game feels like it was made for that kinda flexibility.

The Switch Lite is currently for sale at not far off half of the price of the Switch in the UK at the moment so adding one was seriously tempting. The situation with AC was genuinely my reason for not pulling the trigger.

WELL it happened! This morning I dropped my switch lite and it hit my chair and the screen broke. I then discovered you cannot transfer your saved game to a new switch.

I had just bought 3 million in turnips and dropped them all too. Not that it matters much.

I took it in to a local game repair shop for repair but they said screens would take a month "at least".

Nintendo repair centers are offline until further notice.

I ended up having to buy a new switch lite (which isn't easy but got lucky at my sixth Target location). Took it to a shop and they are swapping the parts around. $300 to replace the switch lite and save my game. Hopefully it works out.

I pay for the Nintendo Online Service, it seems to imply that the game is saved in the cloud or at least on the MicroSD card. Swapping the SD card into a new switch does not work and the online feature doesn't work. All indications I had seemed to make me believe there would be an easy way to recover. Obviously I didn't read the fine print. I imagine I won't be the first.

I couldn't be more disappointed.