[Let’s Talk] Animal Crossing: New Horizons impressions

It’s tough to believe, but it’s been seven years since the release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It’s been even longer than that if you played the initial Japanese version. Animal Crossing fans have been clamoring for a new, proper entry for quite awhile now, and the wait was made especially tough since New Horizons was originally planned to launch in 2019.

But hey: the wait is finally over, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons has arrived around the world. Now that the game’s been released, we imagine that many of you have already started out on your island journey. Have you added it to your Switch library? What are your impressions of what you’ve played so far? Let us know in the comments below.

Highlights from last week’s topic: E3 2020’s cancellation and the expo’s future

JasonBall

I always spent the week in June sitting in a chair watching livestreams on my computer. Nothing changes for 99% of end consumers. We’ll all still sit at home around the world watching livestreamed presentations as always. It’s just the 1% that actually fly to LA that are affected here.

Locky Mavo

While it was always at midnight where I am (like nearly every live-stream), I always did like taking time off work and watching E3.
But as long as there’s a direct-like, live-steam event, the cancellation E3 shouldn’t effect that at all. If anything, this has simply fast tracked to where E3, along with a few other games shows, seemed to be heading anyway.

R.Z.

Well, the cancellation sucks, I always look forward to E3 and not having it this year just adds to the dismal atmosphere of the first half of 2020 (thanks mr. virus …).
I just hope that the companies will actually still play the game and keep the reveals coming via live streams etc. It really feels like the world has come to a halt and announcements seem to be on wait too, so I’m kind of afraid the companies will half-@$$ it and have much less to show than usual.

About E3 being relevant or not …
Well, there was a good podcast on NE a while ago where the point was discussed thoroughly.
I’ve also seen a recent video by Arlo about that (as a cave-person I’ve only recently discovered the channel and I’m surprised by how often I agree with the blue puppet), and while it completely flies over the industry/backstage aspect, it also makes some good points.
Personally I think it still is relevant. Of all the expos and events out there I think it’s the only one that actually really matters to non-attendants since it’s the only one with a large volume of reveals and news tied to it, not just a bunch of demos and newer builds.
Other events sometimes get a couple reveals, some interesting news, but it’s usually nowhere near what we get at E3, so at least among expos and live events E3 is still king in my opinion.
Now there has been a trend that Nintendo has embraced of making announcements at odd times of the year, robbing E3 of some of its attractivity, and on the Nintendo side there have even been years when I felt like the E3 direct was less exciting than some of the other directs. I still think it doesn’t make E3 irrelevant though since I believe there’s a synergy between the different industry actors that makes it much more interesting, if only because they are competing for the giant amount of attention that the event garners.
For these reasons I don’t think E3 will “die” anytime soon, every year people spell its doom but I usually don’t see the same disdain when the event actually comes around, most actors play along and the coverage is as big as usual.

Now I do believe that a future without E3 is possible. I actually think many of the actors of the videogame industry would love to go the Nintendo route and just drip news at their own pace, making their own little events throughout the year.
For them the big downside to that is that much like Nintendo they would only be speaking to their fans. E3 has massive coverage and people tend to watch everything, even from brands they don’t care about usually. With special events it’s more of a closed comittee thing. Obviously most news outlets cover every aspect of a Nintendo direct, but it’s very likely that people who don’t care about Nintendo will skip all of the material dismissing it as a Nintendo thing.

So I’m not actually afraid for E3’s future, and not having it this year, or at least not having it “in full” is quite a downer, but these days what isn’t, huh ?