Animal Crossing One Island Per Switch

1. All Profiles On A Single Switch System Will Share The Same Island In Animal Crossing New Horizons
2. Why Does Animal Crossing: New Horizons Only Allow 10 Villagers On An Island?
3. Does Animal Crossing: New Horizons Have Co Op Multiplayer?
4. Animal Crossing New Horizons Doesn't Support Transfer Of User And Save Data Between Switch Consoles; File Size Revealed
5. Random: Bandai Namco Twitter Account Complains About Animal Crossing, Tweet Quickly Deleted

In an unfortunate piece of bad news, life is going to be a lot harder in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Animal Crossing fans who have come accustomed to owning and playing multiple towns.

During a recent interview with IGN, Animal Crossing developer Aya Kyogoku revealed that up to eight players can live together on a single New Horizons island, using the eight playable accounts on a Nintendo Switch system. Furthermore, it was said that you cannot have multiple islands.

Then, when it comes to online and local wireless, up to eight players can be on an island. This is doubled from New Leaf’s previous 4-player limit. And though there is a travel theme to New Horizons, Kyogoku confirmed you can’t set up a tent on a friend’s island. However, Kyogoku told IGN you can make up to eight playable accounts on one Nintendo Switch and they will be able to live on the same island. You cannot have multiple islands, however.

All Profiles On A Single Switch System Will Share The Same Island In Animal Crossing New Horizons

The restriction of only one island might not seem any different from Animal Crossing: New Leaf on its surface, but key differences in how the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch systems handle saving are important to understand the issue here.

On the Nintendo 3DS, a physical copy of a game like New Leaf stores its save file on the game cart itself, allowing the cart to be moved between systems or swapped out with a different New Leaf cartridge for a different town. But with the Nintendo Switch, every game’s save file is only stored locally on the system’s internal storage, not the game cart.

What this means in practice is that your island or town is tied to your system — you can’t simply remove one New Horizons game cart and pop in another for a completely separate new save file!

Why Does Animal Crossing: New Horizons Only Allow 10 Villagers On An Island?

Simply purchasing a new game cart to start a new town will be strategy of the past. In the Animal Crossing series’s history, the only game to operate in this manner was Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii.

Especially with Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the most active players in the community have become very familiar with the option to own and operate multiple towns, whether for villager cycling purposes or just pleasure. It’s potentially going to be a rough adjustment for many players and we certainly hope Nintendo will reconsider.

Despite the differences with the Nintendo Switch, this could be solved by treating every user profile on the system as a separate save file — something that many other Nintendo Switch games already do. Animal Crossing: New Horizons appears to be treating all user profiles as one giant save file with different characters on the same island instead.

Things To Do Every Day In Animal Crossing: New Horizons (switch)

We certainly hope Nintendo will reconsider and make a change! The only issue with that solution would be the oddity of selecting the island owner’s profile in order to log in to their island and not your own personal profile, assuming you want to share an island with someone as Nintendo has clearly designed the game around.

Pre-orders are now open for Animal Crossing: New Horizons at Amazon,  GameStop, and Best Buy. Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for more on Animal Crossing: New Horizons as we approach the release date next year.Animal Crossing: New Horizons will give you your own island to explore on Nintendo Switch, but you're out of luck if you want multiple islands on the same console.

Fans of Animal Crossing are finally about to see a full-fledged game come to a new console when Animal Crossing: New Horizons comes to the Nintendo Switch. It promises players a solo or cooperative experience, exploring your own or other players’ tropical islands, and making it your own little paradise. However, if you’re looking to start multiple islands among friends or family on the same Nintendo Switch, you may be out of luck. Nintendo has stated that there will only be one island per copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, per Nintendo Switch console.

Does Animal Crossing: New Horizons Have Co Op Multiplayer?

The odd restriction was discovered in the italicized print of the game page for Animal Crossing: New Horizon on Nintendo’s Australian website, as discovered by ACPocketNews on January 30, 2020. The crux of concern lies in the fine print beyond the game description, which states the following.

“Please note: only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch console, irrespective of the number of users registered to or copies of the game used on one console, ” the page states. “One Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island.”

One of the coolest features of Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a unique island you can make your own in single player, locally with up to four players, or online with up to eight players. Unfortunately, you only seem to get one island per system.

Animal Crossing New Horizons Doesn't Support Transfer Of User And Save Data Between Switch Consoles; File Size Revealed

The bottom line of Nintendo’s fine print is that it would seem that regardless of whether or not you have multiple accounts, different players, or more, you will only be able to have one saved island on a single Nintendo Switch console and Animal Crossing copy. It’s unfortunate to say the least for folks who want to do their own thing on the same Nintendo Switch system. It’s especially strange that different Animal Crossing islands can’t seemingly be relegated to singular Nintendo Switch accounts, regardless of whether or not you have multiple Nintendo Switch Online accounts. Also odd is that the italicized print is not on the US Nintendo website product page for Animal Crossing. has reached out to ask if the stipulation is indeed universal.

The hype for Animal Crossing is real. The Desert Getaway looks delightful alone or with others, and the new limited edition Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch seems like a wonderful addition to the gaming shelf. Will not being able to play different islands from the same console leave a sour taste in your mouth? Let us know in the Chatty comment section below.

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Stimulus Games, and the Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@ and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.Nintendo has newly re-confirmed an unfortunate detail of Animal Crossing: New Horizons today regarding the number of different islands or towns we can create and play on.

How Many People Can Be On One Island In Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

Unlike most previous Animal Crossing games, you will only be able to have one single island saved at a time in Animal Crossing: New Horizons per Nintendo Switch system, regardless of how many copies of the actual game you own.

Up to 8 players with registered accounts on a Nintendo Switch console can live on one shared island, and up to four residents of one island can play simultaneously on one console. Please note: only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch console, irrespective of the number of user accounts registered to or copies of the game used on one console. One Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island.

It’s pretty clear cut without any lingering questions — you will only be able to have one island per Nintendo Switch console. It doesn’t matter if you use a different profile, buy and insert a different physical copy, or download a digital copy.

Random: Bandai Namco Twitter Account Complains About Animal Crossing, Tweet Quickly Deleted

This is because the Nintendo Switch stores ALL game save data on the internal storage, instead of a physical cart or SD Card like Animal Crossing: New Leaf did on Nintendo 3DS. So no matter which copy you play on a Switch console, it’s loading the same save file from the same location.

Alternatively, it would have been possible for Nintendo to have each profile on the Switch console load a separate save file with a new island, but they choose not to do so. We can only speculate why, but there’s three main possible reasons in my opinion:

Personally, I believe it’s likely some combination of reason #1 and #2 with perhaps a tiny hint of #3. While reason #3 might seem logical, I have some doubts as I believe they could sell many more additional copies than consoles, enough to make up the difference. Only the most hardcore fans are going to buy an entire new console for this reason.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Will Only Allow One Island Per Switch

Workaround to this restriction, albeit an unlikely one. If different regions around the world use slightly different versions of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, like region-specific events for example, it’s possible that save files will be separated allowing for multiple islands using different regional copies.

This is a big stretch though and we won’t know for sure until we see exactly how the game handles regions. There are some Nintendo Switch games with one true universal version, and other titles where there are small variations like included languages. We’ll let you know if we get a definitive answer to this at any point.

Otherwise, the statement confirms that up to eight players can live

Animal Crossing + Mario