Nintendo has announced that Animal Crossing will be available in Japan on November 8th for ¥4,800. There’s a few new screenshots after the break. It was also confirmed that there will be a Nintendo Direct broadcast with an exclusive focus on the game, so look out for details about that.
Nintendo of Europe has revealed that Animal Crossing will not be available this year. Instead, the game will be released at some point during 2013. If there’s any further details released, you can be sure to hear about them on the blog.
According to this source, we’ll have to wait until 2012 to get our hands on *Animal Crossing 3DS*, *Kid Icarus: Uprising* and *Paper Mario 3DS*. Or, at least, in Europe. Given that this year is already packed with first-party titles, it wouldn’t be too surprising for *Animal Crossing* or *Paper Mario* to come out next year. But the idea that *Kid Icarus: Uprising* won’t be out this year seems baffling. The game is still being developed, sure, but the demos at E3 were so full of content and it’s already been in development for so long.
Katsuya Eguchi, the creator of *Animal Crossing* has shared the following message:
> To those Animal Crossing fans, I just would like them to know that there’s progress and we should be able to offer a new download movie soon. As for features and specs of the game, I can’t go into too much detail, but players will be able to arrange their furniture the way they like, and we’ll be offering new networking experiences.
It’s surprising how silent Nintendo has been about *Animal Crossing 3DS*. But maybe they have something super awesome in store? Or maybe they’re just really lazy. Hard to tell at this point, but hopefully there is more news soon. This is probably the number one game people keep asking me about.
*Animal Crossing* is not playable at E3, so that’s a shame. But to hold you over for the moment there’s a heap of screenshots after the break along with the official trailer from E3.
Nintendo is still working on *Animal Crossing* for the 3DS, but news-wise everything’s been quiet. I doubt this will change until E3 at the earliest but a reader, going by the alias of Pippi uploaded entire demo version of the game running on the 3DS, which you can watch above.
**Note:** There is a slight chance this footage is old, but I figure it’s going to be of interest to newer readers nevertheless.
Our buddies over at 3DS Buzz interviewed James Honeywell, Nintendo UK’s head of marketing and when asked about Animal Crossing on the 3DS he said that:
> “…the demo was shown at E3 to showcase how an Animal Crossing game could and might look running on 3DS.”
The fair assumption to make was, “oh, so Animal Crossing isn’t actually coming to the 3DS?” It sounded like the game may have just been a tech demo, and I was fair close to reporting as such. But don’t you worry your pretty little head, Nintendo of Japan is still quite clearly listing the game in their “Upcoming Software” section, and it sounds like Honeywell was either being unnecessarily cryptic, or perhaps he wasn’t sure how much he could say. That said, I wouldn’t expect the game in the near future as we have seen very little of it.