Only one Animal Crossing: New Horizons island can exist per Nintendo Switch console no matter how many accounts are registered or copies of the game owned, Nintendo has confirmed.
The Nintendo of Australia website carries fine print, spotted by GamesRadar, that makes it clear:
“Please note: only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch console, irrespective of the number of user accounts registered to or copies of the game used on one console. One Nintendo Switch and one copy of the game is required for each unique island.”
This is how previous Animal Crossing games worked on Nintendo’s past hardware, but there was some hope among fans that things would be different on Nintendo Switch, which supports multiple users.
Nintendo’s fine print does not explain this situation, or offer any clue as to why it must be the case. Could there be some security risk? Is this Animal Crossing save data any more valuable than any other save data that does not have this limitation? Or perhaps the decision is largely philosophical. Animal Crossing is all about sharing the same space as your family, as its creator, Katsuya Eguchi said in a 2006 interview with Gamasutra: