Up to eight people can live on one island in New Horizons. However, only four can play at one time on a single system. Presumably, that’s referring to couch co-op or something along those lines. Online and local wireless play lets up to eight people come together to simultaneously live the island lifestyle.
Equally important is how user accounts work. Games like Breath of the Wild give each user account its own save slot. However, New Horizons is different. The listing reads, “one Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island.”
So, one Switch = one island, regardless of how many user accounts are registered on that Switch. Though the listing says one Switch and one copy of the game are required, save data is only stored on the Switch system.
Unless Nintendo comes out with something different for New Horizons, you can probably pass the same New Horizons game card around and create new islands with it on different consoles.
Whether that’s incentive enough to shell out for the just-announced New Horizons limited-edition Switch console is another matter. All we can say to that is Tom Nook knows how to hit us hard to get our Bells.
As of now, Nintendo of America hasn’t updated the game’s U.S. pages, but stay tuned to GameSkinny for more Animal Crossing: New Horizons news as it comes in.
