This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

It was recently revealed that you can only have one island per console when Animal Crossing New Horizons arrives next month, meaning that you’ll need a second system if you want a second island. If you do own a second system and were hoping to use both to mooch around the one island though, it looks like you’re out of luck.

Over on the Nintendo Switch subreddit, a user has posted an image reportedly of the back of the download card for the game. In it, is a disclaimer which prevents the transferring of data between systems. Here’s the image in question:

The section in the black box reads, and roughly translates, as follows:

“Es kann nur eine Insel pro Konsole erstellt werden. Die Übertragung von Nutzer- und Speicherdaten zwischen Konsolen wird für diese Software nicht unterstützt.”
You can only create one island per console. The transfer of user and memory data between consoles is not supported for this software.

We knew, of course, that Animal Crossing New Horizons doesn’t support cloud saves, but this does seem to indicate that you’ll be unable to transfer data manually between systems as well. Bad news for people who like to hop between consoles when playing Switch games, and also potentially bad news for anyone who starts their island on system and then looks to upgrade further down the line.

Something to bear in mind if you’re hoping to pick up that sweet Animal Crossing New Horizons Switch. Disappointed by this news? Tell us all about it in the comments.

Source: Reddit