Nintendo Us Animal Crossing New Switchmccracken: On January 10, 2019, Nintendo’s global and US presidents discussed Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the Switch, and the company’s forays into theme parks, movies, and more. They also spoke about how looking at Nintendo as an “Hobby” instead of a “business is one of the keys for success.”
As an avid Animal Crossing fan I found this discussion to be insightful. We learn that the reason why they haven’t given us a release date is because they don’t want to disappoint us. A lot of times when a game is announced at an event like E3, fans get excited, buy their pre-order, and then you later learn that the game won’t release for half a year. It has happened with multiple games in 2018 including other Nintendo titles like Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee. However, fans know that this has become a normal thing for Nintendo games, but in New Horizons’s case I would hope for it to be fast.
One piece of information that stood out was when Shigeru Miyamoto said: “We want to do more in the theme park business.” He went on to say that he wants to make it bigger and better than Disney or Universal Studios. Miyamoto also went on to speak about how important it is for Nintendo to create a “synergy” between their video games, theme parks, and movies. We’ve already seen hands on examples of synergy between the Switch and some of their other properties such as with Super Mario Odyssey’s Balloon World update, as well as Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee’s connection to Pokemon Go. However, what I’m most interested in is to see how Nintendo might integrate Animal Crossing into these different entertainment mediums.
Animal Crossing could be a good fit for theme parks. The fact that it is a role-playing game can make it easier to implement a story line, and if done correctly the game could work well in an educational setting. In addition, if the games and movies are all integrated together events could take place as if we were inside of the games themselves. For instance, in the movies we could have characters from The Legend of Zelda appear as in the case of the recent Super Mario Bros. movie, or characters from Animal Crossing could appear in settings like Super Mario Odyssey’s New Donk City.
Miyamoto had an idea that they could run a boat around the world and have different entertainment mediums represented in each room. This is something that I would very much like to see happen.
