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

The whole cloud save situation for Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been the only sticking point that’s concerned fans ahead of the game’s release next month. Players are limited to one island per console, you won’t be able to transfer save data from one system to another, and cloud saves have long been known to be out of the equation completely.

Many fans were concerned that their meticulously crafted islands could be in danger of going missing if something should happen to their Switch as a result. It is a system you can take out and about and accidentally leave on a bus or train after all. It seems that Nintendo have heard these concerns and are rethinking the ‘absolutely no cloud saves’ approach.

The Japanese Animal Crossing site now has a small disclaimer, translated by Nintendo Life by way of Google, that suggest Nintendo can provide a workaround in the event of ‘failure, loss or theft’ of your console:

“This software does not support "Save Data Storage" of Nintendo Switch Online, but in case of failure, loss or theft of the Nintendo Switch [console], we are considering a function to back up save data. Use of this function is limited to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. Correspondence time is undecided. We will inform you as soon as the time is decided.”

The function being tied to Nintendo Switch Online suggests that you may be able to use cloud saves after all, given that they’re currently only available to subscribers of the service. There does seem to be some caveats attached to that though, so we’ll have to wait for further ‘correspondence’ to see if the situation gets any clearer.

Positive development do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Source: Nintendo Life