Animal Crossing: New Horizons will only allow save recovery for ‘damaged or lost’ consoles at this time

Well, that answers that

All eyes were on today’s Nintendo Direct to clear up a rather curious issue with save data backup for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and the company didn’t really deliver.

In the beginning of the Direct, Nintendo teased and frontloaded a special FAQ section, which went over various topics like families using the same Switch device, as well as amiibo support. But once they got to the save backup portion, it was kind of glossed over.

Very quickly, the voiceover noted that cloud backups were not available for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and gave no promises for ever including them. However, in the case of damaged, or lost consoles, “a service will allow you to recover back up save data from the server.” This service won’t even be available when the game arrives: instead, it’s coming “sometime after launch.” Also, did you catch that tiny print that flashed on screen for a second or so? “Nintendo Switch Online members can only have save data recovered one time due to loss or damage of system.”

So there you have it. Don’t lose your console before this nebulous “after launch” timeline!