You Can Only Have One Island Per Console In Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I'm going solo so none of this concerns me too much.

What are friends?

That made my head spin lol. Good thing we have 3 systems. I think all the kids will want their own island. If not perhaps I will.

So, can 2 people play at the same time with one console/copy and 2 joy cons?

@Xylnox I've heard about those, from what I've read they're people you hang out with because you want to, not because you have to.

I want to know what Amiibo could do for it. I mean sure we could get furniture, clothes, and new residents but I want to know if they add that function for New Horizons.

@Torakaka With the number of Animal Crossing amiibos and cards I've bought, I'll be really disappointed if they don't at least do something.

im just in general happy to see this being a thing.

@AnnoyingFrenzy Oh, you have to hang out with them. Hehe. Most of my friends are online but we mainly play PC and a little Xbox. Right now, I am pissed off with Blizzard with Warcraft 3 Reforged. Ugh! I won't go into details but if you did a search online you'd find a lot of people are pissed off with Blizzard. Heh

My understanding then is you cannot share a copy of the game between two consoles to have two islands? They careful say, “One Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island.” To me that implies if you have two Switches and one copy of the game, you cannot make a new island? Which... doesn’t make sense to me, the island data is surely saved to the console, does the game somehow lock itself to one console? You can’t share the game with friends or family so they can have a separate island on their Switch? And what does that even mean for trading the game in?

I’m sorry but their wording really baffles me.

@Xylnox Oh trust me. I know.

@Torakaka honestly, I hope not personally. A lot of the Amiibos are now hard to find and overpriced, so new players have to pay through the nose or just pray for RNG to get what they want. It was fine when they came out for the game they were advertised for, but I’d rather they let the fad go and have a clean slate here.

I wonder if local co-op will be split screen, or the type of co-op were you both share the screen and get pushed back into view if your friend wanders off?

@ShadJV You're forgetting that they have not made Amiibo for Joker, Terry, Banjo and Kazooie, Hero and Byleth. Not to mention the upcoming Fighter's Pack 2 fighters, Nintendo knows when to keep something going until it outlives its usefulness.

I'm gonna need you to run that by me again Liam.

I was hoping that we could have multiple players on the same island, without the need for individual accounts.
Its just a way to boost the number of accounts, even if they're not being used

Are we able to play solo and coop? I would love to be able to have a game of each going if I can?

Thanks for clarifying what was already an extremely clear statement. Do you have a minimum word limit on these articles?

@CairiB You have one Island per system. You can play solo and coop on that one Island. If you want your own island you'll need a second system.

@ShadJV I think they're trying to emphasize that there's only one island per system; having two Switches and one copy means two islands, but you can't play at the same time. Save data is tied to the console, and I don't think Nintendo can lock a cartridge to a system, even if they wanted to.
I think I still want to get two copies of Animal Crossing though, so my brother and I can play at the same time

@sanderev oh that’s fine, the one island thing doesn’t bother me too much. I am beginning to feel like these little bits of info here and there are starting to confuse me. 🙈 hopefully they will do a dedicated directed at some point that makes everything a bit clearer.

Hmm, wonder what this means for the save file.
If it's the same island for everyone on one console, that sounds like it's a shared save data. But Nintendo locks shared save data to the console and doesn't let you transfer it.
If so, hopefully there's an in-game option to transfer it, or that's going to annoy anyone playing on multiple Switches, or even getting a new Switch.

My two kids have never played AC before, really looking forward to sharing this with them!
Simultaneous play sounds awesome.

As long as i can get the non-local fruit into my game, i'm happy.

So what happens when I play with 8 other people online and then want to also play offline? Will the changes carry over once I go online again? If so, wouldn't that be confusing if I changed something outside my house?

@Roto13
I’ve got the rare-ish Sanrio cards and the Monster Hunter amiibo. I’ll be apoplectic if I can’t use those 😤

I am looking forward to that online feature!

Do you have to pay to be able to play local? Pretty sure no, but just checking.. Been waiting for AC to buy a Switch so not familiar with the paid membership thing. (two people in one house, two different Switch consoles)

Hmm 4 players in co-op, 8 players on a shared island, and 8 players online.
The last Animal Crossing game had no co-op, 4 players on a shared village and 4 players online, right?
So, that's a bump in multiplayer in every regard.

I'm a little bit confused. How does 8 players on an online shared island work when it comes to changes you make to the island? Do you have to always be online if you choose to share an online with other players? Does it update when you save?

@Rebusmind @HeroponRiki
You play on your normal save file, you can just choose to open it to other players (people on your friend list only if it works like New Leaf). You can manually save just like offline, and I think it autosaves whenever someone arrives/leaves.

I have no friends so this doesn’t matter to me.

@MetaRyan that makes the “one copy” part completely irrelevant and even false though. That sentence isn’t referring to local multiplayer, it’s referring to unique islands.

@MattyHammo: "you both share the screen and get pushed back into view if your friend wanders off?"

That type of co-op.

@Torakaka I’m talking specifically about Animal Crossing Amiibos though. Smash Amiibos are mostly collected for the sake of collecting - the Smash functionality isn’t that great.

@ShadJV What about Wolf-Link, Ganon, and the few non-Animal Crossing ones then? I mean it would make sense that they could do that again but this time add more like say Metroid, Pokemon or even Mario?

@Torakaka a lot of those Amiibos are hard to find at starts now and can get pricey to try to get a hold of. So no, I think the game shouldn’t have any of that Amiibo support, it’s hardly fair to those that don’t have the Amiibos. Once again, it’s fine for the games they were originally advertised for, but finding a lot of these Amiibos on shelves are near impossible now.

Honesty, though, I’d be surprised if they do have Amiibo support. Super Mario Maker 2 dropped the Amiibo support that the predecessor had. They’re slowly getting phased out. I wouldn’t have had an issue with them if the content was available as DLC (for a lower price since you’re not getting the figurine), but I always hated how they implemented their Toys to Life line. Way too many of them and you often couldn’t know which would be worthwhile investments.

The actual multiplayer implementation sounds amazing! The idea that this can become a more coop game than I expected sounds beyond fantastic.

Though I think a lot of people that share a household Switch are going to be upset that the island is shared between all local users. Family trolls are going to have a field day.

@Kalmaro you should still make more then one character and use both at the same time when playing you can get more work done cause will have more pocket space

@CodyMKW I've never considered that before, how hard is it to control two at once?

@CodyMKW I now want to see someone do a speedrun this way.

@kickyring I believe so. That's how they did multiplayer during the E3 demo. It's covered under "up to four residents of one island can play simultaneously on one console".

So if I have a console and a game, and my girlfriend who also has her own Switch, if I got her this, could we be on ONE island together? Could we each have an island and also be on the other's?

@Dang69
If you both have a Switch and a copy of the game each, you can visit each other's islands locally. Or you can play on one Switch on the same save file with two user accounts.

I have a question for you guys....so I am getting the new AC switch and i still have an old one. I plan on getting 2 copies of AC:NH because my boyfriend and I want to play together. But I am curious if anyone knows if its possible for both of us to play at the same time on our own consoles with our own games and for one of us to move into the others town and be able to play and live in the same town together at the same time? Any info would be helpful! Thanks in advance! 😁

@JugOfVoodoo that's awesome. Thanks. I thought that was the case but since there was no mention here I was worried.

@jedikitty Nintendo online service is tied to the account user not the Switch itself. For example I have my Switch and online service so I can play online. My wife has a user account on my switch but cannot play online using her user since she doesn’t have the online service. I can play online on her new Switch that has my account linked since I have online service. She still has to buy the membership to play online. If you have 2 people who want to play online go with the family online service since it’s cheaper than buying 2 individual memberships.
In regards to local co-op if you’re playing on the same console you’re good with the one person having online service but if you’re playing in the same room on different Switches you will both need online service subscriptions to get play together.

My question is if I buy one digital copy can 2 different users on different switches play at the same time Together? The wording is seeming to say no but my wife and I have played Splatoon, MK8, and Smash this way which is making me think maybe...

Eesh, that’s annoying. I was hoping me and my brother could each have our own islands.

Suddenly buying a Lite became more valuable.

I'm not too bothered by this personally. I do hope it'll be easy to delete your island if you're not fine with its initial layout though.

Weren't all of these pieces of "news" already known for quite some time? Having this article pop-up in my RSS feed multiple times because of "new information" added to the story gets tiresome.

I wonder if this is a save data size issue, namely the decision to keep all the save data on the internal memory. Can't be a cloud save issue because this game doesn't support cloud saves.

I don't want to be in the same island with my brother. I hate him. Now why Nintendo cannot fix this? This is an insult to video game industry! I demand an answer!

Lol why is this so confusing for people? 1 island per switch. If you want 2 islands, you need 2 switches. If you want to play those islands simultaneously, you need 2 games as well. The cart doesn’t have memory on it so do the math. You could never have more than 1 town

Absolute horse dung, I'm disappointed and won't be supporting such asinine practices.

I never liked Animal crossing. Too slow n boring for me. They should add dungeon exploring etc

Is it saying that an island can be truly shared by online friends, or just that up to 7 friends can simply visit yours?

@ShadJV If you're gamesharing it with someone, I don't see how they'd be able to stop both people from creating your own islands if you have your own Switches you're playing on.

If you mean a cartridge, well... save data writes to the console's flash memory. It doesn't physically alter the cartridge. So, again, I don't see why you'd need two copies.

@BenAV agreed!

This shouldn't affect me too badly, as the only other person who might play New Horizons on my Switch is my sister (and she generally prefers playing things together), but this is a bad move on Nintendo's part

The only frustration is that there are no cloud saves

@NEStalgia "I think a lot of people that share a household Switch are going to be upset that the island is shared between all local users."

If we had been planning on buying the game this might be enough to stop us, depending how badly the 3 of us wanted to play it. I never played SSB4 on Wii U b/c it shared a save file across accounts and my kids unlocked all challengers and 1/3 of the challenges before I turned it on.

Having the option for everyone to share one island is cool, keeping people who have their own accounts from having their own save file is just stupid. Like all the people on here who don't realize Switch lets you have accounts, unlike the Gamecube, so yes, it is possible for each account to have it's own save file, hence own island.

It doesn't really matter to me either way, to be honest.

Now, if there was one game series that I would love to have more than one save file at a time, it's Pokémon. I find it ridiculous that there are slots for two save files, and yet you can only have one at a time.

@CairiB
It will bother a lot of people who share a Switch and want their own island.
It's really messed up you can only have one Island, despite having more than one account per Switch.

@BenAV
It is definitely not how it should be done.
You apparently don't share a Switch so you don't care, but for families that do, this is a crappy, unnecessary move.

Bit head spinning. I have an og, the little one a lite. We are both hyped for this game. I’m prepared to buy two games but for me, like a few of the posters here, I want to leave letters and play around adding stuff to my kids land etc...if I can do that , then all good.

So if me and my partner want to play on the same console do we both have seperate houses on the island? So I can decorate my own house with my one preferences and she can do the same with her house?
Also if she plays before me and harvests all the fruits etc then will there be nothing for me to collect when I play later the same day?

A tad disappointing, but not a deal-breaker.
At the very least, I hope everyone gets their own house like Animal Crossing GC.

@BenAV
It can be great Co-OP
But if 2 individuals sharing the same island want two different aesthetics, then you either compromise or you both end up discontent.

Something that has been really bothering me is that there is a high likely chance this game will not support cloud backup save, so if something happens to our Nintendo Switch that means bye bye Island and bye bye to all our stuff... that concerns me... Also, if this is the case then transferring your account from one Switch to another could possibly mean starting over again from scratch, we need answers to these questions!

@playstation_king If it's like Animal Crossing on the 3DS then the world is shared between players, but every player does have their own house. If you want a 2nd Island you'll need to get a second system. (And maybe even a second game, if you want to play at the same time on different islands / systems)

Huge deal for me, as both my daughters will want to play. They won't want my island and I don't want them collecting everything.

@rjejr yeah, the shared family island is a cool idea until Bart decides to offend your favorite villager and they leave......

Eh! That sounds crazy to me. I’ve never played animal crossing 🤷🏻‍♂️

@Ralizah I agree (though there’s certainly ways to write to game cards, especially if it’s simply to lock it to one console), but I still don’t understand why it’s worded that way.

@jedikitty If you can play local wireless (although they havent said anything about that? Gotta check) then you dont need to get a Nintendo Switch Online Subscription to play with your other friend or visit its island.

The game lets you have 1 save data per console and all accounts (up to 8 accounts) on said console can make a house in game and play on the same screen together.

So if you both want your OWN island, you need two switches and if you dont want to be swapping cardtridges all the time, get 2 copies of the game too.

@Chibi_Manny High likely chance? Its been confirmed there is no cloud saving for Animal Crossing New Horizons. Why? Nintendo's devs stated they dont want people to use the time cheat to work in the game, something that the cloud saving could do? (I truly dont understand the reasoning but hey...) so yeah, we should be extra careful with that data.

Bit disappointing that me and my daughter can have our own games going on my switch. Co op is good but I will want to play it when shes not around and vice versa so we will both miss certain things in the game.

I could care less as im playing the game by myself anyways

@Xylnox Me too, got a refund though. I'm done with the "big companies" for a while now.

@Kidfunkadelic83 Get your daughter a second Switch (lite), if you don't play at the same time you can share one gamecard or game download.

@ShadJV If that was the case trade in would still be fine. There would be an option to delete the tied save on the cartridge, although that could render the save on your console useless and therefor woukd have to be deleted next time you put it in that console. There's no way they'd get away with locking the game to a console forever. It might not be the case at all, though and it is probable possible to share a cartridge and have an island on each.

I know this was to be expected since the previous entries also allowed only one town per game, but considering how much more customization will be now, I guess many expected to have at least slots for more extra islands.
Maybe they will realize this when the game launches and see the amount of original island ideas. There could be some way to at least have some extra islands alongside the main one in the future.

To this I say the only time we will know is when it's released and players try this out then we will know which is meant and which isn't meant by this.

Updated? You sure? This info was right there in the original article.
Is it just a reason to change the title and trick people into thinking more info has been released?

This is AMAZING news!! A huge part of the appeal of Animal Crossing is sharing the town with the people that use your console; send gifts to each other and basically "live" on town influencing one another. I couldn't be happier with this information. Thank you Nintendo!

Why can't this come out like NOW? Oh the waiting.....

First concern is the potential daily rush for money rocks / fruit etc but pleased about simultaneous multiplayer.
Assuming this is partly to offset people having multiple saves on one but like Pokemon (three of us can share saving me £100)

But what if the island is extremely tiny?

@ShadJV Gamecards have only read only memory. So NO there is absolutely no way to "alter" the game card once it left the factory. (These cards are flashed with ROM data, something that your Switch can't do)

They worded like this because it's still impossible to insert one gamecard in two systems at the same time

Wait, I have the opposite problem. What if you have two switches and two people who want to share an island? Just use cloud saving no problems? Nintendo kinda ballses the multiple console thing up for a company that sells two different SKUs. Who owns two ps4s or Ones? Almost nobody, but if you do it's just pick up and play no matter what. Nintendo and their hoops, man

This could be a big reason why this game doesn't support cloud saves. If one person "reset" his/her save state, all other player accounts who are using that same Switch will end up with that new save state.

Not an ideal situation whatsoever, but that's what it is.

@rjejr Wait, wasn't the point of the article that the islands would somehow be locked to the console and not to the account so you cant make another account to play on a different island on the same switch?

@sanderev I wouldnt do that. She wouldnt play it enough in the long run to warrant getting a second one and I'm not paying double for games to play online when I can system share our ps4 games and only pay once.

Just so I understand, 4 accounts of the same switch can play at the same time in I suppose a split screen format on the same island?

This is a very Animal Crossing way of doing things.

@Xansies Yes, that was the point of the article.

My complaint was w/ the 1 or 2 people saying there can only be 1 island per console b/c the GameCube version only had 1. But that doesn't make any sense b/c the GameCube didn't have accounts like tye Switch does.

The entire reason the Switch has accounts is so we can each have our own save file in the games we play. Taking that away is just stupid.

The biggest question on my mind is... what would happen if one were to transfer their save data to another Switch?

@Fandabidozi : Are you kidding? Rare-ish? The Sanrio cards are perhaps the rarest of all amiibo!

Unfortunately I missed out on them as Nintendo Australia only stocked about 300 packs in their eBay store, and they have never reissued them. The prices online are absolutely obscene.

@Silly_G
That’s interesting to know. 🤔 My sister sent mine over from the UK.
If they are in the game and you’re in French Perth let me know and I’ll scan em for you.

This does not affect me - but at the same time, I feel for kids who share a Switch but want to do their own thing or parents who share a Switch with little kids and want their own file.

Why couldn't this be an option? As an option, I would think it was a really cool idea, but mandatory it seems kinda limiting.

I thought we already knew this?

@scubydo It won't be split screen. One player will be the "leader" and the camera will mostly focus on them while everyone else has to try and stay in the same screen as them. You can switch leaders at any time but I still think it's going to be more annoying than split screen.

@CidMaik darn, i wasn't sure if it had been confirmed or not, thank you for letting me know. You're right, we definitely need to be extra careful.

Well that's pretty ridiculous.

This is terribly annoying, as I have since swapped to playing primarily on a Lite, but would like the damned option to copy my save data over to the olde Switch for on-TV play. The bleedin’ fook, Ninty?

@TeeJay wait no split screen??? What kind of idea is that?????

Wouldn't be a Nintendo game without at least one completely asinine design choice that fails to meet perfectly reasonable user expectations. Ha ha isn't Nintendo quirky?

I'll still play and love this game though, so Nintendo never has to learn...

@ShadJV It also makes me wonder if that means you're going to lose your entire island if your Switch dies. My son and I will probably end up buying a second Switch and our own copy of the game each since I don't want my 11-year old mucking up MY island.

@ReaperExTenebris On a 3DS with New Leaf, you could easily swap your cartridge for your kid's and then they could play their town. With this setup, Felix and I will each have to have our own cartridge AND our own Switch. Way to pry $300 more out of me, Nintendo. But I'm not happy about it, and this will definitely mean I stop paying any money in Pocket Camp, instead of continuing in the cookie club.

Im actually intrigued to see how this can/will be implemented... The way the switch is designed if you have multiple accounts each with their own saves

I’m more curious about amiibo functionality.

Please, use your connections and appeal to Nintendo for maybe just one more island per console? Or maybe at least a little more for people with family plan for Nintendo Online? One per console.. Just.. Yea. Thank you.

Can both my kids live on the same Island if they each have a Switch and each have the game? I say yes, my son says no.