Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn't dead yet, although the last major free update is coming soon. Animal Crossing: New Horizons Version 2.0 adds a lot of features players have been asking for since the game's launch in 2020, and a recent Animal Crossing Direct made it clear that Nintendo has further plans for the world of New Horizons - players just will have to pay a little extra to enjoy it.
It's no surprise that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now offering paid DLC, especially after Pokémon Sword & Shield saw success with The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra. Continually adding extra features into a game post-release for free is clearly beneficial for the players, but in a game which doesn't offer microtransactions or pay-to-win elements, the game's developers still need to be compensated for their work. Animal Crossing: New Horizons' new DLC - Happy Home Paradise - will cost players $24.99 USD, and from what has been shown so far it definitely looks like it's worth the money.
Animal Crossing's paid DLC isn't the only thing players have to look forward to, however. The long-awaited return of Brewster and The Roost (now located inside of New Horizons' museum) is coming to the game for free, and Animal Crossing players will all be able to enjoy the game's new cooking and farming mechanics without paying any extra money. Harv's Island, the Nook camera app, and home customization and design options are all also receiving massive overhauls. Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can now even enact ordinances on their islands, forcing the island villagers to adopt whatever kind of lifestyle is best suited to their needs.
Animal Crossing DLC Will Put You To Work
While the base Animal Crossing: New Horizons game is all about making the most comfortable and enjoyable life possible for residents on a player's island (and the player themselves) the Happy Home Paradise DLC is about building vacation homes for different NPCs throughout a smattering of different islands, each with their own landscape, seasons, and environment. Players can add in whatever furniture, sound, and lights they want to create the ideal vacation spot based on certain villager needs and requests, and can even polish the game's furniture (including, finally, Animal Crossing's Froggy Chair) to make the entire room sparkle.
Players who find success or enjoyment with Animal Crossing's Happy Home Paradise vacation design aspects will also be able to apply those skills on their own island. It is also possible that Animal Crossing villagers already living on a player's island will ask for their own vacation destination to be designed. Eventually, Animal Crossing: New Horizons players may find themselves building an entire city they can travel to. This is a LOT of new content at once - but this New Horizons game update doesn't mean Nintendo is done with Animal Crossing yet.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons May Get More DLC
Adding in farming, cooking, vacation home design, Brewster and The Roost, and new villagers may just be the start of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' next chapter. While Nintendo clearly stated that Animal Crossing: New Horizons Version 2.0 would be the last of the game's major free content updates, that doesn't mean they won't have more paid DLC like Happy Home Paradise in the future. In fact, depending on how well Happy Home Paradise sells, it could mean Nintendo will decide to turn Animal Crossing into its own version of EA's The Sims.
Animal Crossing becoming more like The Sims 4 would be both a good and a bad thing. The Sims 4 offers numerous microtransactions along with different kinds of DLC game, stuff, and expansion packs, and Animal Crossing needs to stay far away from that business model. One of the best things about Animal Crossing: New Horizons is that no items in the game cost real-world money - only bells, or Poki, as was shown being the specific currency in Happy Home Paradise, which hopefully isn't a stand-in for some sort of purchasable coin. Nintendo should ignore all of the worst parts of The Sims' monetization, but it shouldn't ignore its longevity or the many, many expansion packs it has produced.
Why The Sims Is A Good Model For Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Ignoring the fact that The Sims 4 introduced farming recently as well, Animal Crossing: New Horizons should follow EA's lead in a steady rollout of paid DLC expansion packs. Animal Crossing doesn't need to pump out 10 new hairstyles and 10 new shirts and sell it for $5 every month, but a major content update like Happy Home Paradise in New Horizons once or twice a year for the next few years would go a long way towards not only ensuring older players stick around, but also gives a great incentive for new players to pick up the game themselves.
Between the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Version 2.0 update and the paid Happy Home Paradise DLC, players will be getting lots of new content, new villagers, new customization tools, and new designs to mess around with. Cooking and farming in particular is something many Animal Crossing fans have been asking for since March 2020, and it's clear that Nintendo's long silence didn't mean they weren't paying attention to what players were asking for. It's unclear what is next for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but the developers have proven they know exactly what should be added to make the game more entertaining to both returning players and new ones.
Future Animal Crossing updates may stretch the idea of island adventure even further, adding in cave exploration or underground temples like The Sims 3: World Adventures did. With the ability to build things like restaurants, schools, and hospitals, perhaps in the future Animal Crossing players will be able to take on jobs besides the ones already available in the design, demolition, and construction fields. The reintroduction of Kapp'n and his boat could lead to cruise ship-style Animal Crossing DLCs, where players must build their own ideal vacation cruise liner and travel from island to island picking up and dropping off villagers. Perhaps Tom Nook will even decide he wants to return to the city, and players will one day be able to move between their island and a busting metropolis filled with animals at will. Now that Nintendo has shown its interest in offering paid DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there's no telling what may come next.