The Animal Crossing series has a lot of potential for mobile games beyond just Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which is currently the only one in the franchise. After the massive success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons at launch, many assumed it would receive regular content updates for longer than just a couple of years. While there hasn't been any major new content for Animal Crossing: New Horizon's since November 2021, Nintendo could supplement this lack of updates with new mobile titles for the series to complement Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
With the future of the Animal Crossing series unknown, Nintendo could take the previously established characters and gameplay aspects of the franchise and translate them into their own mobile titles to tide fans over. This has worked out well for the Pokemon franchise as mobile titles like Pokemon GO, Pokemon Unite, the upcoming Pokemon Sleep, and many others have helped give fans a range of options to play aside from the mainline entries. The Animal Crossing franchise holds almost as much potential as Pokemon, so it only makes sense to go through with a suite of mobile titles.
Other Types of Mobile Titles the Animal Crossing Series Could Adapt
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has been a great way to experience Animal Crossing-lite gameplay on mobile. While the game doesn't completely replicate all aspects of a mainline Animal Crossing game, it has enough similarities that fans will know what they're in for when they download the game. However, as a series with a variety of different tasks to perform in its best entries, Animal Crossing mobile titles could turn any one of them into a full-fledged mobile distraction.
A perfect example of this sort of activity is the fishing mechanic found throughout the Animal Crossing series. Turning fishing into its own dedicated mobile title could be very popular, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons' CJ serving as the perfect mascot for a simple function on a mobile device. The Pokemon series was able to turn its most notable fish into a mobile title via Pokemon: Magikarp Jump, so Animal Crossing could follow a similar route and give players the chance to fill out their Critterpedia by catching all the previously available fish and new exclusive variants.
Fashion and character customization are another huge part of the Animal Crossing series that could make for a simple mobile game. This type of game could draw upon the Style Savvy series by featuring the ability to customize a player character with various collectible clothing items, as well as incorporate some kind of shop-management system. The Animal Crossing franchise already has the perfect mascot for this type of game in Label, one of the Able Sisters who frequents Animal Crossing: New Horizons players' islands for fashion checks.
It only seems natural that more Animal Crossing mobile titles could be successful following Pocket Camp given how many unique mechanics the games feature. Pokemon demonstrates that a series can have more than one mobile title without having to worry about splitting the fanbase of one or the other. Aside from Pokemon games, Nintendo seems to be moving away from creating new mobile titles and only continuing to support the ones that remain popular, but a new Animal Crossing mobile game could be just what fans need in the time before a new mainline entry hits shelves.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is available now for mobile devices.
