Animal Crossing: New Leaf has only been available on the Nintendo 3DS since June, but it has been a resounding success for Nintendo. Despite that, the company is looking to the future and is now deciding which platform will get the next game. Animal Crossing began its life as a home console title on GameCube, before jumping to the Nintendo DS with Animal Crossing: Wild World.
The Wii also saw its own release with Animal Crossing: City Folk, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say we may be looking at the beginnings of an Animal Crossing Wii U title. Here’s what series creator Katsuya Eguch had to say:
“We have already started thinking about what to do next, but there is no concrete direction yet. First, we need to decide which hardware to develop a new Animal Crossing for, and then we want to use that hardware and find out what it’s capable of and what kind of features it provides. Then we can start thinking of elements of Animal Crossing and how we can realise them using the hardware. So until we discover these new inventions, we will not decide the direction.”
With the Wii U being Nintendo’s first high definition console, if Animal Crossing Wii U is the next title in development, I hope the team plans on taking advantage of that fact. Every Animal Crossing title to date past the Game Cube version has had a rolling pin world that the player runs around in, bringing new things into view as you move closer to them. The Wii U has the power to support a fully rendered world without the need for panels or rolling pin worlds, which would be a first in the series.
What would you like to see from Animal Crossing Wii U?