Did Nintendo increase the map size since last E3 ?

[Boccages]

I don't know what to think anymore. Here is a short comparison between the map at E3, and the one shown on Feb. 3rd in the Nintendo Switch my way commercial shown on Nintendo's YouTube chanel.

I took this comparison from this Reddit post and reformatted the screenshots.

This other guy in another Reddit conversation calculated tiles - and I don't know if the total is right or not I did not redo his calculations. But he calculated that the map could be :

Here are a bunch of comparisons I calculated:
~3.5x the size of wild world
~2.8x the size of new leaf
~2.4x the size of the nh beta map from E3
2.25x the size of city folk
<1.9x the size of gamecube

Can someone double check his calculations and tell me he is right or wrong ?

What do you guys think ?

 

[John Wick]

It looks the same to me, but math confuses me.

 

[Villager Fan]

The section where Nook’s area has shrunk in size, and the tent icon is very tiny. It does look like they added another row of acres which expands the map to the north. Also, this map has a dock and a small secluded beach in the north, so it’s entirely possible they made the map bigger.

 

[jim]

i'm glad i'm not the only one who noticed because i wasn't sure if it was just me imagining things. it does feel bigger!

the map's scale just felt different. i knew there would be changes from E3 to release but i didn't think it would be super dramatic or noticeable before we got another direct. the game looks a little more detailed in regards to little details like lighting too.

 

[Feraligator]

I really hope it's bigger! I loved getting lost in GC and CF towns when you first started due to their size, and having to learn where everything was. It would be cool to have that same feeling when starting NH, plus with the amount of freedom we have, a bigger town would just be perfect.

Edit: reading the Reddit posts, it's possible they've upscaled the island size from E3 based on their calculations, but we won't know for sure until we get more footage from recent gameplay with a map. The image is blurry so I'm not sure how they're using pixels since the pixels would be pretty big on a blurry image. I never noticed the dividers for the acres before though, they've changed it from 6 to 7 and it looks like the Resident Services Area has decreased in size.

 

[Dewy]

Here is a similar thing someone did (source). They used the size of the dirt plaza that we've seen a lot of to estimate the rest of the island.



I'd say the island is definitely bigger than New Leaf. Seems like it anyway. According to this image it's almost the size of the GameCube town


This was based off the original map we've seen though, so if they made it even bigger... then it might be huge?? Idk

 

[BigBadButterfree]

Well looking at how chaotic the second map is, I think the E3 map is likely one that they made themselves (as in not auto-generated) for playtesting purposes, so it looks neater (like the very straight cliffline and perfectly symmetrical split river). So it's possible that they've expanded the map size for the final product, as that much space wasn't needed for test purposes.

Just my 2-cents.

 

[Antonio]

I hope it's bigger. I don't see much of a difference because i'm legally blind.

 

[Ably.Saucey]

Oh, I hope so! that would be amazing!

 

[Boccages]

Either they reduced the size of acres or they have really made maps bigger since E3. Look at that.

 

[HoennMaster]

People keep doing these map size analysis...but considering we only have footage from the game and not the same itself, I don't take any of this as confirmed until the game itself is out.

 

[DylanMcGrann]

Interesting. If this is true, I suspect Nintendo limited the map at E3 only for demo purposes, not to reflect what the final size would be.

There may have been performance issues with the early build of the game that were mitigated by limiting the play area. We know they made that map and build specifically for E3. It makes sense they would want the map to be bigger with up to 8 players now being able to live in a town.

 

[moo-kun]

It looks bigger to me, but that could be because we can expand our maps and the map has been expanded?
I think it could expand more than this though (? ꈊ ?)✧︎˖?ｵﾎｯ!
Nice catch Bo! ☆

 

[AlyssaAC]

From looking at the comparisons you posted, it does indeed look bigger. I'm actually liking the four sided map they showed in the commercial. It looks like a good map.

 

[oath2order]

I don't see how the math works out but I don't really care. NL size or bigger is fine.