Animal Crossing: New Horizons Delayed To Avoid Rushed Game
Following substantial anticipation for the next Animal Crossing title, this past E3 giving fans a new official look at the series upcoming entry Animal Crossing: New Horizons. While the showcase revealed new gameplay centered around its deserted island setting, fans were also confronted with news the game would be delayed months past its former 2019 deadline.
Fans are sure to be upset about the delay, especially as it means such an-eagerly-awaited game is now that much further away from release. According to Nintendo’s Senior Director of Corporate Communications, Charlie Scibetta (via TechCrunch), the extended wait was deemed necessary to ensure more development time and a top-tier quality experience for gamers. Otherwise rushing out an incomplete product was described as “a disservice” to Animal Crossing fans.
We’d be doing them a disservice if we put out a product that was rushed. So it’s a difficult decision for a company to make to move a ship date out. We think moving to March 20 of next year was the right decision, because we needed to give the development team enough time to make it the game we want to make.”
“That’s been the Nintendo approach from the beginning and it’s something that we’re going to continue to do,” Scibetta continued. “We’re not going to rush a game out until it’s ready because we want to keep that quality bar high.” Despite being delayed to 2020, the desire to keep standards high for Animal Crossing: New Horizons is likely a relief for fans. This idea to keep a quality atmosphere was previously echoed by Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser, who expressed efforts to avoid crunch and provide employees a “good work-life balance” in an interview with IGN.
For us, one of our key tenets is that we bring smiles to people’s faces, and we talk about that all the time. It’s our vision. Or our mission, I should say. For us, that applies to our own employees. We need to make sure that our employees have good work-life balance. One of those examples is, we will not bring a game to market before it’s ready. We just talked about one example [in Animal Crossing’s delay]. It’s really important that we have that balance in our world. It’s actually something we’re proud of.”
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is set to release for Nintendo Switch on March 20th.
What do you think? Are you glad the new Animal Crossing is being delayed? How do you feel the entry is shaping up so far? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more headlines recently featured on DFTG, check out these next few news stories:
Eric Hall2712 Posts
Phone-browsing Wikipedia in one hand and clutching his trusty controller in the other, the legendary Eric Hall spreads his wealth of knowledge as a writer for Don't Feed the Gamers. Be sure to catch his biweekly "Throwback Thursday" segment for a nostalgic look at trivia from the past.
