Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting a brand new update for the months of November and December in just a few days. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons winter update rolls out on November 19 and adds a handful of new events and some very helpful in-game features.
One of those in-game features is something that New Horizons players have been asking about for a very, very long time. Finally, Nintendo has announced that Animal Crossing: New Horizons players will be able to fully transfer their save data to different Switch systems.
Before Animal Crossing: New Horizons released back in March, there was plenty of speculation surrounding the more technical aspects of the game. Specifically, a lot of players were worried about how transferring save files would work after Nintendo confirmed that players could only have one island per system. Unfortunately, shortly after Nintendo also confirmed that New Horizons saves were locked to one specific Switch console, with no way to transfer those saves to a new console at launch. Now, after eight months since New Horizons released, Nintendo has announced that players will be able to transfer save data between systems.
This feature actually allows for two distinct ways to transfer player save data to a brand new Switch system. First, there’s the whole island transfer, where players can transfer an entire island along with all of its residents to a different Switch system. Second, there’s also the option for players who aren’t the island’s representative to transfer a single player resident to a new Switch system, including their appearance, name, inventory, home, and storage. This option will be available via a new Island Transfer app on player’s Nook Phone’s, which players normally use to terraform their island or manage their Nook Miles in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
This save data transferring feature has been one of the most highly requested features by players, so it’s great that it’s finally coming to New Horizons. Back in July, players got another long requested data-oriented feature, being the ability to let players back up their New Horizons save data in case of some sort of system or data loss. Though it’s taken quite a while for this feature to come to the game, it’s nice to see that Nintendo is still adding much-needed features to New Horizons eight months after release. Though to some players, this feature may have come a little too late for them.
Nintendo’s recent financial report confirmed that New Horizons has seen dwindling sales numbers in the past few months. While some may think that’s bad news, it’s important to remember just how incredibly well New Horizons has sold in total, even being the second best-selling game in Japan of all time. So while sales may be slowing down, New Horizons still has plenty of life left. Hopefully, players who have stuck with the game will make good use of this helpful new save data transfer feature.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.