Nintendo had planned to continue its foray into the mobile phone game market this year with a free-to-play version of Animal Crossing. Today, however, the company announced that the game has been delayed, with them choosing to prioritize the upcoming Fire Emblem instead.
News of Nintendo’s decision comes by way of a statement released earlier:
For smart devices, we plan to release the game application Fire Emblem Heroes on February 2. We will also follow last December’s release of Super Mario Run for iOS with an Android version in March. To accommodate the releases and operation of these applications, we have revised the release schedule for Animal Crossing, which we had originally planned to release during this period. This title will be released during the next fiscal year
Given that the company’s next fiscal year begins on April 1, we’d expect the Animal Crossing mobile game to arrive sometime after that.
Animal Crossing on mobile was announced last year as part of Nintendo’s move into the sector in partnership with mobile giants DeNA. It was said to be a ‘pure game application’ by Nintendo, and was also to be ‘free-to-start.’ It’s now expected to launch before March 2018.
Fire Emblem, meanwhile, which was announced alongside Animal Crossing, is coming to Android and iOS devices this week in the form of Fire Emblem Heroes, which will also be using the free-to-play model.