Animal Crossing: New Horizons adds quite a number of things to the series, such as terraforming, better customization, and many quality of life improvements, but older fans might have noticed that a few older features or characters haven't made it into the latest Animal Crossing game. That might not be the case for long, though, as a datamine has potentially spilled the beans on what players might expect from future updates. Twitter user _Ninji, a hobbyist reverse engineer and dataminer, has found some interesting information locked away in the game's code. If you don't want to be spoiled on what Nintendo might be adding to New Horizons in the imminent future, you might want to look away.

Paintings will likely make a return, with the museum having two new entries for upgrades, one of which is an art section. There's also a "Museum Shop", along with a "Museum Cafe", with the latter having a Gyroid section, meaning the clay-figures will also be returning. According to information in the game's code, Crazy Redd will apparently visit "a secret beach" on your island via a boat, to sell wares.

New Leaf's bushes are making a comeback as well, with Azalea, Hibiscus, Holly, Hydrangea, Camellia, and Osmanthus bushes listed in the game. There are also vegetables, such as tomato, wheat, sugar cane, potato, carrot, and pumpkin.

Nook's Cranny has a third upgrade mentioned, but there's no other data there.

Diving is potentially back, with 33 unused entries in the critterpedia for "seafood".

There's no certainty that any of these actually get added to the game, but with the game's developers adding these bits of data in with recent patches, it seems likely that there are future content updates in the works.

So, caveats.
First, I’ll explain how this most likely works behind-the-scenes (based off my game dev experience).

All of these features will exist to some degree in Nintendo’s source code and data files, probably including others we don’t know about…#ACspoilers #ACdatamining

— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) April 19, 2020

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[banjo2]

Has Nintendo ever changed the way their online play works? I can't think of an example.

No -_- unless you add things like modes or DLC. I think they are going to do that with Pokemon SW/SH

They improved the match rules calculation in SSBU, iirc

 

[xxNathanxx]

that doesn't change the fact that the quality of the sound design and modeling are also key components of the overall game product.

No one even argued that in the first place. A feature in a game is something you can do, like catch bugs or unlock shops. Music and graphics have nothing to do with gameplay features. The frosting is meant to make a great cake that's full of flavour taste even better, but if your cake is made of white bread, you can make the frosting as intricate as you want, the cake won't be any tastier.

If everyone has access to all the content on day one

As has always been the case!

If everyone has access to all the content on day one, a large number of people would stop playing the game after they've unlocked all of the content, and now Nintendo's lost a chunk of their audience.

How would that even work? "Cool, I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours to unlock all there is to do in this really cool game. Now I will never buy another game in this series ever again."

The whole point of releasing this dlc isn't because the devs are lazy and just didn't want to put it into the base game, it's to encourage players to keep coming back to the game.

I specifically said that the content that's going to be released in all of the updates is most likely already finished. The developers aren't lazy, Nintendo's just pulling an incredibly frustrating marketing strategy to make it seem as though they listen to their customers ("we heard you missed X, so here X is back again!"), which it seems you fell for hook, line and sinker. They're doing the same thing with Pokémon, except there people truly are gullible imbeciles because they'll gladly pay money to get back features that were taken out specifically so they (Game Freak, Nintendo) could sell them as separate, additional parts. In fact, they did the same thing to their online 'services' in general, they've always been gratis with dedicated servers, now they've taken out the servers so you have to use a peer to peer connection, and you have to pay them for this privilege.

 

[Deleted member 512337]

I specifically said that the content that's going to be released in all of the updates is most likely already finished. The developers aren't lazy, Nintendo's just pulling an incredibly frustrating marketing strategy to make it seem as though they listen to their customers ("we heard you missed X, so here X is back again!"), which it seems you fell for hook, line and sinker. They're doing the same thing with Pokémon, except there people truly are gullible imbeciles because they'll gladly pay money to get back features that were taken out specifically so they (Game Freak, Nintendo) could sell them as separate, additional parts. In fact, they did the same thing to their online 'services' in general, they've always been gratis with dedicated servers, now they've taken out the servers so you have to use a peer to peer connection, and you have to pay them for this privilege.

I bet the updates are paid dlc because the back of the box says there are in game purchases(with no way to buy NSO in the game). I hope this isn't the start of Nintendo becoming another activision when it comes to content that was free now being monitized.(to be frank, it has already started, but its no where near as bad as activision)

 

[MagnesG]

And all of those were ultimately minor things, or that game's particular gimmick. All previous Animal Crossing titles had a load of things to unlock after you'd finished paying off your rent (or before). New Leaf, the handheld game from seven years ago, has you keep on unlocking new things for months and months of playing the game every day. New Horizons has, uh, recipes? Wow!

Nintendo's new way of releasing games seems to be to release something barebones, and to then release all of the stuff that would have normally been in the game from the start as a whole bunch of content updates throughout the year, to make it seem as though they're always improving their games and listening to their customers, when most likely everything that's going to be released this year was already 99% finished.

So you want all of the past features back plus new features from the start? How would you tackle on the added development time to ensure the quality and the post launch treatment? Adding more features? Why not just consider the game as whole?

I'm sorry this pretty much feels like an entitled whine with no fluffs on reality. You should really check out how Sims 3 and Sims 4 did with past features and how they struggles with development, even with their rampant microtransaction tactics, while AC done it for free.

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I bet the updates are paid dlc because the back of the box says there are in game purchases(with no way to buy NSO in the game). I hope this isn't the start of Nintendo becoming another activision when it comes to content that was free now being monitized.(to be frank, it has already started, but its no where near as bad as activision)

I'm more betting on paid dlc like the big splatoon expansion. New features and stuffs.

 

[TunaKetchup]

Maybe they should have put these things in the release of the game

I've already moved on

 

[Brigand]

I really hope we get diving back! I wonder what the plans are for those vegetables? It would be cool to be able to cook dishes as another form of DIY.

 

[Witt997]

glad to see the possibility of these comebacks, especially paintings: my favourite section of the museum.

 

[anhminh]

Wow, I just realize that Redd is the direct counterpart of Nook because one is a Tanuki and the other is a Kitsune. If that so then I hope Redd has his kids work for him as well.

 

[medoli900]

Seems like the standard with this team. Releasing half baked games, only to release the rest of the game via dlc later on, probably to extend its lifespan. I'm not a fan of this approach.

I prefer this than the game being put on development hell. Looking at you, Pikmin 4.

 

[ploggle]

can't wait until diving is added back ! :^(