Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a glimpse at Nintendo’s online future

Tiger Borgia, a content creator focused on cozy games, has been pulling weeds in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for over five years.

Given the current landscape in which game developers constantly release new updates to vie for the attention of audiences, Borgia’s dedication to New Horizons can come across as admirable. Nintendo has not released a major update to New Horizons since the Happy Home Paradise DLC in 2021. (Just this week the game was patched in advance of the Switch 2.) The version of New Horizons Borgia plays today — the one where she pulls weeds and fishes each day — is more or less the same game that the company released in the spring of 2020.

At a time when seemingly every publisher is trying to capture a piece of the lucrative live-service boom, New Horizons showed Nintendo slowly inching its way into the space with more than a year’s worth of regular updates after launch. And that expansion into live service is something that could become an even larger part of Nintendo’s future with the Switch 2.

Speaking to The Verge, Borgia explains that two years ago she would have said yes to having more content in New Horizons, but her opinion has since changed. “Now I feel like the game should be left as is,” Borgia says via email. “New Horizons already had its moment. I would be open to the next Animal Crossing title being a live-service game, but I would be skeptical about paywalls and subscription fees.”

Since the release of Fortnite and PUBG: Battlegrounds in 2017, live-service games have become a core pillar of modern gaming. Live-service games — or what some call “games as a service” — don’t have a clear start and end. Instead, developers release a base game and continue to put out updates that add new characters, game modes, and other content to try and get people to play as much as possible.

The model has become a massively popular way to monetize games. Industry analyst Mat Piscatella published data saying more than 40 percent of all time spent playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles in the US in the month of January was spent playing the top 10 live-service games. And the trend has hit the developer side too: a 2025 survey from the Game Developers Conference found that roughly 30 percent of all “AAA” developers are working on a live-service game.

Despite all the big numbers, Nintendo has been selective with the live-service games it develops. Creating a live-service game isn’t as easy as flipping a switch, and even major companies like Sony have struggled to enter the space; it recently shut down development on two such projects. However, some fans are wondering if that could change with the Switch 2.

Previous titles like Splatoon 3 have already gotten live-esque service with regular updates and events — even if the earlier entries in the series were ultimately shut down. And New Horizons received a steady stream of updates initially. New features, like the Switch 2’s Discord-like social tool GameChat, could benefit live-service games that rely on online communication and logging in with friends regularly to play. Additionally, leaks from an October playtest suggested that Nintendo could be working on some sort of MMO for the Switch 2, which could also fall under the umbrella of a live-service game.

But here is the most compelling argument that a shift could be on the horizon: Nintendo has already been investing in live-service games for years. If you look at Nintendo’s mobile games, entries like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp already used a free-to-play model with in-game transactions at launch.

Some Animal Crossing fans welcome the possibility of adapting the mainline games to a live-service model. New Horizons is really good for people who like to get creative and design an island, but the game can run out of new content after players complete certain tasks and storylines.

Tom, an artist who played the game for more than two years, tells The Verge a live-service version of the game could have kept him playing even longer. “More updates would have made it way more likely that I’d have kept going, especially because it would keep friends coming back too,” he says.

Additionally, the gameplay and structure of New Horizons could be the perfect fit for a live-service game, since it has seasonal events depending on the time of year and the region you play in. However, some of the fans I spoke to expressed skepticism.

“I was never expecting to get infinite content from Animal Crossing honestly,” Christi Kerr, a player who spent more than 700 hours playing New Horizons, tells The Verge. “I was used to old AC games where all the content came out at once, and you play it until you feel like you’ve done all you want. I thought the updates to New Horizons were fun, but also kind of frustrating as a New Leaf player.”

That’s not to say that players The Verge spoke to are completely closed off to the live-service model with the next mainline Animal Crossing game; it just needs to be done in a way that feels respectful to players’ time, money, and attention. Today, even beloved live-service games are regularly criticized by fans for requiring too much time to level up a battle pass or for poorly designed events.

“If Animal Crossing were to consider a live-service approach, I really hope that they would focus on seasonal events and quality-of-life updates,” Borgia says. “I would be nervous to say I hope for continuous new content like furniture and clothing, because that can easily turn into a microtransaction nightmare. I’d love to have more seasonal celebrations, challenges, and temporary NPC visitors.”

So far, Nintendo has shown a measured approach to live-service games. In the case of Pocket Camp, Nintendo ended up rereleasing it as a standalone game free of microtransactions. Now, people who missed the boat on playing Pocket Camp initially and don’t like in-app purchases can still play the same game.

For the fans we spoke to, this is good enough. Animal Crossing doesn’t need to be some sort of never-ending forever game that trudges on like a zombie throughout the years. As Kerr put it, it’s totally fine to have a game start and end, and then get a new one down the line.

“I would’ve been delighted to see updates like a live service game. […] But like I said, I’m not bothered if the next Animal Crossing game sustains my interest for a while and then I’m done.”