Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis out now on Nintendo Switch and is already offering unique ways of socializing during the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The social features inAnimal Crossingmay not be cutting edge, but they allow friends to keep track of and communicate with friends online, just enough to have fun. The simplicity of the features inAnimal Crossingare bringing up another contentious subject, however. That being the complete lack of social features on the Nintendo Switch in the first place.
The Nintendo Switch Online subscription offers virtually no social features. First, users are required to add friends through frustrating means. It requires players to either be local, to have recently played a game together, or a12-digit Friend Code of randomized numbers. Once on a player’s Friend’s List, friends can see their avatar, what game they’re currently playing, and a list of games they’ve played. There’s no messaging, no party system, no inherent game invite system, or any meaningful social features.
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The problem is thatAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsoffers many of these things. Also,Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis aNintendo game. In other words, Nintendo is more than capable of creating such a system. More importantly, Nintendo clearly understands the value of such features even in a very simple game intended to be played by young children.
Part of the answer, of course, is that Nintendo isn’t a monolith. The developers ofAnimal Crossingmay understand the value of social features, but that doesn’t mean those working on the software for the Nintendo Switch do. And there are likely dozens of other reasons, too, tied to various limitations of the Nintendo Switch’s hardware and software orNintendo’s online infrastructure.
That isn’t going to stop Nintendo fans from questioning, however. It took years to get Nintendo to add as much online functionality as theNintendo Switchhas. It’ll likely take years before they add more, and only then due to continued pressure from fans.
Unfortunately, acknowledging the frustrating situation on the Nintendo Switch won’t result in any meaningful change for the foreseeable future. While it’s very unlikely that the Nintendo Switch may ever receive an update that introducesdirect messagingand social features, there is still a positive outlook.Animal Crossingshows that games can handle these features perfectly well on their own. If players use them, and if they speak about them positively, then maybe more Nintendo games (and other games) will build them, too.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis out now on Nintendo Switch.
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