You can now pre-load Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch

The file size is 6.2GB

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons feels a little more real today now that pre-loading has gone live.

If you pre-purchase (or use a voucher) to buy Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch eShop, you can download the game ahead of time and then immediately regret that decision when you realize the logo is going to torment you every time you look at your home menu leading up to March 20, 2020.

Beyond the game itself, Nintendo is also throwing in a seven-day Nintendo Switch Online trial code.

I got my code via email shortly after buying New Horizons, and here’s the caveat: the trial can’t be redeemed until March 19, 2020, at 9:00 pm Pacific, and even then, it can’t be used by “a Nintendo Account with an active Individual Membership or Family Membership,” according to Nintendo.

I know some of you are super attached to your physical games (for good reason!), but I had to go digital on this one. There was no second-guessing. If I went with a retail copy, Animal Crossing: New Horizons would never leave my Switch’s cartridge slot. The Zelda: Breath of the Wild problem, as I call it.

Nintendo’s fuzziness over save data transfers and backups is frustrating – there’s no denying it – but I’m otherwise all the way in for New Horizons. We’re only six weeks away from our island excursion.


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Jordan Devore
Jordan is a founding member of Destructoid and poster of seemingly random pictures. They are anything but random.