A new Animal Crossing: New Horizons update is out on July 29, 2021, which includes weekly fireworks shows and new seasonal items. More updates are incoming for later this year, so Nintendo is asking players to stay patient and stay tuned. But why is that? Why is Nintendo asking for patience for their lackluster updates?
In addition to these updates, more free content for #AnimalCrossing: New Horizons is currently in development for later this year. More information will be shared in the future, so please stay tuned. Thank you for your support and patience.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 27, 2021
What happened to Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
With over 32 million copies sold, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the first Animal Crossing game for many, bringing the series out on a mainstream scale for millions of people. This success, however, is a double-edged sword, which means that the somewhat lackadaisical update pace is now coming under fire from people who want more Animal Crossing: New Horizons content.
Of course, this is ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room: COVID-19. NH released on March 20, 2020, the week that the entire world shut down, that would certainly slow down the update pace of any game, especially when considering that 2-3 years of content (placing the end of life cycle for NH in March 2022 or March 2023) has likely been delayed.
With Animal Crossing focusing on different seasons when it comes to updates it's hard to imagine that it's been easy to keep up the four major updates a year schedule (for 2-3 years) and release fun, exciting, and long-lasting content. You'd think it should be better 1.5 years after COVID first hit us, but considering how long (and how people are still) working from home, this is a problem that will continue to be felt in the gaming industry years down the line. This isn't what we hoped or wanted, but this should also be expected as the gaming industry tries to righten itself again.
