Animal Crossing mobile release date pushed back to April at the earliest

It was last April when Nintendo said Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing would arrive to mobile in fall 2016. That release deadline was subsequently pushed into 2017, before the end of the fiscal year. Though Fire Emblem Heroes will land in just a couple of days (it hits Android this Thursday), Animal Crossing won’t be here until the next fiscal year. Meaning this April. At the earliest.

Nintendo confirmed the delay earlier today in a financial statement and said it was to “accommodate the releases and operation” of Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem: Heroes. Though it doesn’t seem unreasonable for Nintendo to delay one game to make sure two others receive more time and resources, I’m sure die-hard fans will be hurt by the revelation.

Animal Crossing is a community simulation game which seems well suited to mobile for a number of reasons. The series draws on real-world events like seasons, day and night cycles, holidays etc. but I could imagine Animal Crossing mobile doing things that might have been more difficult on consoles, like pulling local weather data to reflect it in-game, or making use of GPS tracking to move between cities.

That said, Animal Crossing will be free-to-play and the hundreds of in-game items typically available in the games could get some serious monetization. We’ll see.

Though this delay may already be a disappointment to some, the good news is that Animal Crossing will launch on iOS and Android at the same time: unlike Super Mario Run, which won’t be ported to Android until March.

What are your thoughts on the Animal Crossing mobile version? Let us know in the comments.