Following Miitomo, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Super Mario Run, Nintendo appears finally ready to reveal details for its fourth iOS gaming app, Animal Crossing. The company has confirmed on its Japanese website [Google Translate] that a new Animal Crossing-focused Nintendo Direct will debut this Wednesday, October 25 at 12 p.m. local time in Japan, meaning the direct will take place on October 24 in the United States at 8 p.m. PT (via GameSpot).
The announcement has so far been shared through Nintendo's Japanese and Animal Crossing UK Twitter accounts. Anyone will be able to watch the broadcast worldwide on Nintendo's Japanese YouTube channel right here, and the company's English language YouTube channel should see the new Direct posted around the same time.
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The pre-recorded broadcast will last 15 minutes and will focus on Animal Crossing's iOS application, with no news coming at this time for 3DS or Switch versions of the franchise. There also won't be any details on any other smartphone apps, according to the company's website.
Animal Crossing for iOS was first announced in April 2016, alongside Fire Emblem's iOS game, as the two newest titles in Nintendo's original goal to release five smartphone apps before March 2017. When Animal Crossing didn't show up for its original fall 2016 launch window, Nintendo delayed the game in January 2017 until its next fiscal year, running from April 2017 to March 2018. So, with the upcoming Nintendo Direct, it appears that the company is ready to debut Animal Crossing as its next iOS game, potentially before the end of the year.
After Animal Crossing -- which will be the fourth game in Nintendo's partnership with iOS developer DeNA -- rumors have suggested that the final fifth game will be one set in The Legend of Zelda universe. Sources speaking to The Wall Street Journal in May predicted that Animal Crossing will hit iOS sometime "in the latter half of 2017," and a smartphone version of The Legend of Zelda would launch afterwards, so if the Animal Crossing release window is accurate there may be some veracity to Zelda being the next Nintendo IP to come to iOS devices.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)I presume this one will be free to play with micro transactions since the business model for Mario didn’t work out as well as they hoped at first.
My notifications started freaking out at 6am as everyone I know started sending me messages about this hehe!
I believe that they are holding off on VC titles because they want to promote Nintendo Switch Online service, coming in 2018, which is set to allow access to an entire catalogue of VC games with added online play. Also, I believe that these games are better played with a physical controller, and this well may be [part of] Nintendo’s reasoning, too.What REALLY bothers me is that they aren't willing to bring old classics to iOS. Yeah I get they want to sell NES and SNES minis... but... what about all the old GBA games? making a GBA mini would be kind of redundant. Anyway, my point is, they should port classic titles to smartphones instead of making freemium and "lootbox" fanservice (Fire Emblem) crap. This is probably gonna fall in there, btw...
EDIT: fix punctuation.