Just yesterday, we reported on how Animal Crossing: New Horizons would not feature cloud save back-up or save transfer support. For some reason, Nintendo is stuck in 2002 when it comes to saving data and Animal Crossing has some weird limitations that seem deliberate in how restrictive they are. Thankfully, Nintendo isn’t completely out of touch.

In a post on Nintendo of Japan’s website, the company stated that it is considering adding a back-up function for New Horizons to help users restore their data. “Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t supported by Nintendo Switch Online’s Save Data Cloud Backup,” reads the site. “However, we’re currently considering a function to backup save data, uniquely for the software, in case one’s Nintendo Switch console itself gets damaged, lost, or stolen.”

That last part is still a strange stipulation. The reason for a lack of cloud saving (as stated during E3 2019) was that Nintendo wanted to prevent users from manipulating time to unlock different items or gain an advantage in the game. The way this is currently worded, users won’t be able to simply download their save data on a random whim, but will have to go through Nintendo if they meet one of those situations.

This awkward back-up feature is better than nothing, but it’s still really outdated. We’ll put aside how paying for Switch Online to back-up data is kind of crappy and simply talk about how unintuitive it is to put restrictions on when a user can access their saves. What reason would Nintendo have to limit people from restoring a back-up unless their console was stolen?

Everything about New Horizons’ save data is just Nintendo being typical Nintendo. The company has always marched to the beat of its own drum, but this staunch refusal to even modernize just a little is maddening. You can’t back-up your save, you can’t have more than one island per console, and you can’t even transfer that save to another device with the same profile.

Hopefully, users complain enough about this to get some changes implemented. Super Mario Maker 2 got online multiplayer with friends added after the baffling announcement of its exclusion, so there is some hope.

Source: Nintendo of Japan, Siliconera

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