I've seen a lot of people saying ACNH sucks for not having as many items ACPC and that Nintendo prioritizes the mobile game over the main game, and I was wondering if anyone had some opinion on this? I want to hear what other people think of the comparison, if it's fair or not, etc.
Hoping for a friendly and open discussion!
(edit: I don't really complain about this myself because I personally believe they both have their pros and cons, but on twitter I've just been seeing a lot use this comparison without proper criticism so I'd like to hear from all sides!)
Nintendo had decided before NH came out that they were going to focus on mobile games more, but then NH sold way more than they expected.
I'm not surprised we haven't gotten as many items in NH as PC, but I'm disappointed with how low quality NH items feel compared to PC. It's ridiculous how much more detailed the PC items are. NH furniture is very lackluster in comparison.
Like, there's a bounce house the villagers actually jump around in? We never get anything even close to that in NH
Honestly the detail in the pocket camp items is sometimes too much, making the items too specific and limiting how well you can use them in creative ways and I don't really like that. (Also so much pastel pink stuff, please make it stop)
The comparison is always going to be weird though. Pocket Camp is made by a very different team and with a very different business model in mind. As long as they keep pushing items, people who are vulnurable to the mobile gaming pay-to-unlock system will keep emptying their bank accounts to buy currencies. Their profits would drop pretty quickly if they stop updating.
Meanwhile, people pay once for NH and after that maybe only for an online membership, so the profits for that game are made by sales. Most of those sales have already been made, they're not suddenly going to double their sold copies by dropping large, intricate updates. Besides, I think they're trying to keep the complexity of the items down a little in New Horizons - the Switch is already pushing its limits to run the game now.
They're two entirely different games and it's not like they could simply copy-paste items between them to "give us those items too" (even if there are some awesome ones in there). I guess the only way to 'get' those items is to start playing pocket camp, to which I will say no thanks. ^^
In my opinion there is no comparison between pocket camp and acnh (and I do play both daily).
Pocket camp is a ‘mindless clicking when you have nothing else to do’ type game. And for those who say in acnh villagers have no personality they have much much less in pc. Although yes they have a seemingly wide variety of different actions they perform on different items and amenities, it is not like they are interacting with the item. They are set into performing one action on repeat each time you load your campsite, it is not like they are more interactive or alive, more like an animated screen saver. There are virtually no dialogue options, they are more like segue lines to receiving or gifting gifts to boost friendship levels
yes, there are a lot of items, because is is a gatcha game designed to encourage you to subscribe to the various membership paths (on of which is 7.99usd/mo, and to make micro transactions to get more items or speed up various processes like crafting and resource gathering. You can play without spending money but it will be much more difficult / impossible to get all the special seasonal items.
finally, there is much less to decorate and the loading times when you are moving between modes and locations is much more cumbersome than in acnh. There is less scope for personalizing your campsite etc.
so yeah there are a lot of items but many are difficult or impossible to obtain without continually spending money, and the game play is simplistic in the extreme, and you can use relatively few items at one time so they are mostly fun to get but then never useful. Since many of the most unique new items come via fortune cookie you also end up with many repeated items if you are trying to get something specific.
The villagers have no real feeing of being alive and active as they are in acnh, though they are still cute.
I say all this as someone who does play pocket camp and enjoys it for what it is. I find comparing them to be absurd and it usually seems to be something dragged out to make a claim about the supposed deficiencies in acnh, particularly when it comes to items (which is a matter of opinion much too big for this thread and better dealt with elsewhere, but no criticism of those who want more items intended).
I still play pocket camp surprisingly after many months of ignoring it but yes I have to agree the items can be more exciting then NH. Pocket Camp has also been out for 4 years though and I remember getting sick of trying to decorate one small camp ground. At least now they have extended the space but nothing compared to a whole island like NH. PC was pretty basic when it first released activity wise and with the base furniture items. All of my friends stopped playing PC pretty fast. I also didn't realize how bad the quality is for PC until I played NH for almost a year. PC makes it exciting by having new sets every couple months but sometimes the items don't feel like they belong in the animal crossing universe. I guess both have their ups and downs but NH is definitely higher quality even with PC's diverse furniture.
I don't play ACPC because it's too far off from what I want in an Animal Crossing game. It's a spin off. I do however appreciate all the work that goes into that game. I guess it makes me a little jealous that it feels like New Horizons gets less attention from its dev team compared to the attention ACPC gets from its dev team. Whether or not that's true.
They are worlds apart and shouldn’t even be compared IMO. I do play both and they’re two very different games for very different target markets. ACNH is a full console life simulation game while PC is a mobile game that follows the freemium model. Yes, PC has more items but they’re there to lure people into spending more for their gatcha game and yes I do agree with the posters above that PC is more of a mindless clicking game than anything. The villagers are like shells and there’s really not much to do but click and click and wait and wait and spend leaf tickets to get furniture and stuff and once they’re laid out in your campground then what? ACNH, although lacks furniture still sticks to the very core of the Animal Crossing experience which is a life simulation game. So they’re really very very different and I don’t think they should be compared.
One of the worst, misguided and misinformed comparisons to be made (guess that's why it's so common lol). The mobile app and the Switch game have different teams, development schedules, strategies, goals, etc. They only share the IP, more than anything.
Pocket Camp features a free-to-play model with gacha elements- that means that its revenue depends on the playerbase buying ingame items with real-life money. Ingame items can be bought with ingame currency, but this one is usually not enough to acquire everything the game can offer ("free-to-play" users exist even if they can't get all things). However, one important target for this kind of model are the whales- users who drop much more money than the average user. If there are enough whales to be squeezed, a game can find revenue. The core feature of PC is mostly the furniture, so that's why the game gets tons of items (and many really elaborate!). Because they need people to feel the need of acquiring them, and with the Fortune Cookie system (and a bit of fomo), you get a "winning" combination- a whale can spend a lot in order to obtain everything.
NH on the other hand is a console game, where the revenue is at the front- when the game is sold to retailers and consumers. It features many... features, and the purpose is very very very different from its mobile spin-off. While this game has a GaaS-like model in order to keep interest/marketing for a long time, the initial game is an experience by itself. They work on very different engines and so, items from PC can't be "copy-pasted" to NH and even if they could, it woudn't be a wise decision to bring these items free to NH while they cost money to get on PC.
There's no real priority to be fought, they are different games running at the same time. While PC isn't the hit Nintendo expected, NH surpassed shattered their expectations and still has absurd sales. While it's understandable that some fans want to see some of the items from PC on NH, there are very clear reasons why that won't happen. Unless Nintendo listens to those people and brings microtransactions to the main game. Do the developers love or pay attention more to one game? Sure, I can buy that. But that's true for everything, it's not like pumping more jaw-dropping furniture for PC means NH is affected by it. The only ones who are "affected" are the fans who think that because it happens on a parallel spin-off game, it should happen on the main game. Should NH copy/bring over some of the ideas from PC? It could, but it'd need to be altered to fit and not make PC redundant.
Both games need to be different to coexist and while one is existing far better than the other, they are both there, catering to different audiences. They don't need to be compared because there's almost nothing to compare thanks to the different business models.
Some history context behind a spoiler if you don't want to read more.
The market of mobile gaming quickly rose to be an attractive business model. Since people didn't have to spend x amount of money for a dedicated game console, mobile had a mass-appeal instantly and generated tons of revenue and profit. Many games adopted a "free-to-play" model, with "in-app purchases", some of them being the standard "gacha" model. This was around the 2010's, when Nintendo had the ultra successful Wii + DS combo, so when investors and everyone asked Nintendo to develop mobile games, the answer was "no". Iwata and other people thought their IP's wouldn't be suited for that kind of business model and since they had the results to back them up, there was no worries. Enter the Wii U and 3DS. Even if the 3DS ended a moderate success, both were a steep fall from the glory days- so investors and stockholders pressured Nintendo to enter the mobile gaming and they finally accepted. However, the strategy was to build and promote their IP so people could then buy a Nintendo console.
Fast forward some years later, and Nintendo's strategy and goals weren't really met. Miitomo and Super Mario Run turned out to not be profitable; Fire Emblem Heroes was the surprise hit thanks to its profits being high due to the more standard free-to-play with gacha system but in general the strategy wasn't working. Enter Pocket Camp, who also turned out to be a very tepid release, both reception and revenue-wise. Although the impact of Pocket Camp of attracting consumers to buy New Horizons can't be either denied/accepted, we can see that the opposite is indeed true, as PC had one of its best months around the release of NH. So now we fast forward to year 2020, when the Switch is being a beast and Nintendo had to come out and say that yeah, mobile gaming isn't their thing after Dr. Mario also failed (Dragalia Lost was a nice success but it failed the other part of promoting Nintendo games and Mario Kart Tour is kind of mid-tier).
I don't think people realize just HOW much mobile games make. It's absolutely insane. It's not exactly easy to take off with, so please don't go out and invest all your money into making a mobile game, but when it takes off, it takes off. Animal Crossing was already an established IP with loved characters and appealing designs. Throw in a bunch of sparkly new dress up and furniture items into the mix, and it's easy to see how people can turn that "just one cookie" into part of their monthly fun budget.
I think one thing that really bugs me with the comparisons is people saying things like, "I can't believe I spent $60 on ACNH and Pocket Camp gets THIS." It's totally fair to feel like you're not getting all of the items you want, I get that. It's hilarious to think that $60 will get you half of what you see in the cookie releases. Those things have no mercy. To Nintendo, you spent all you will spend. You bought your Switch and the game, and there is nothing more to be made here. The mobile customer spent nothing up front, but has the potential to spend so much more than you did if they just wave the right items in their face.
I think everyone else covered the rest of the story already with the different teams and all. It's just two totally different games you're comparing at the end of the day.
Honestly adding in new furniture isn't even that difficult to code, so i don't quite get why Nintendo doesn't just add more furniture? Like it's disappointing how little furniture ACNH has compared to ACNL and Pocket Camp? I especially miss all the food items/dishes there were in ACNL :/
Honestly adding in new furniture isn't even that difficult to code, so i don't quite get why Nintendo doesn't just add more furniture? Like it's disappointing how little furniture ACNH has compared to ACNL and Pocket Camp? I especially miss all the food items/dishes there were in ACNL :/
As someone who doesn't play PC, it does kinda suck seeing all the cool stuff in that game that isn't in NH. You would think the game that costs $60 and a $300 system would have more content then the free mobile game. The warp pipe in NH is top tier though, if we had more functional or premium furniture items like that I dont think anyone would complain.
When it comes to comparing NH with another AC title, I think it works the best with Happy Home Designer, like someone already did in another thread here if I remember correctly.
Imo, I think the best way to fix NH, at least when it comes to the items, is simply adding the older already existing items from the previous AC games. Pretty sure it would help people being more busy with the game and therefore making it less boring if they have more variety with the items and can design their island and house in a proper way.
At least the latest update added some more interesting items. Perhaps they finally gonna start giving us more unique items which come along with actual new features which changing the game in a positive way.
though given it's designed to tempt players into dropping possibly hundreds. if not thousands, of dollars on, this doesn't come as a surprise
and the game isn't even subtle about it either. practically every day it thrusts some sort of 'HEY, PULL OUT THAT CREDIT CARD' popup in your face. sometimes multiple times in a single day
I do like the PC items and the interaction they have, like how villagers can bathe in the sauna. I think the main difference is PC is basically pay to play and those items usually cost money without spending hours and hours in the game, whereas the updates for ACNH are free.
I play PC and ACNH and have very little desire to have the PC items in NH. There are PC items I love, but there are even more I couldn’t care less about. Can you imagine the developers trying to pick the right items to add to NH? It would be a nightmare, trying to keep everyone happy.
I would like more furniture items in NH, but not from PC.
I agree that it doesn't make sense to compare NH and PC, but I can see why people (myself included) do it. It's frustrating to see PC get cute items like this each month, whereas NH gets... a handful of Mario items, only a couple of which are new to the series. Having to shell out $60 (or even an extra $200-300 for the console, in many cases) that gets comparatively less attention than its freemium mobile game counterpart sucks.
I stopped playing PC last March, and I haven't touched it since. PC is so obviously a cash-grabby grindfest, but I feel that kind of adds to the sting. It's Nintendo's second most profitable mobile game after FE, so of course they're going to go for the whales for all they're worth. Kinda feels like they're saying that the suckers over on Switch already made their one-off payment, so why bother with them?
I'm sick of seeing these comparisons too, the games are completely different.
The appeal of PC comes from all the new furniture they add, and that's all there is to the game. And there's no way you'd be able to obtain all the furniture they preview because a lot of it comes from fortune cookies, which require leaf tickets, and unless you've been stockpiling LTs you're gonna have to spend some money on it. Don't get me wrong, I love the game for what it is and I think adding some items to NH would be really cool, but at the end of it if you're trying to obtain all furniture sets from PC you'd probably end up spending more than $60.
I've been playing PC for over a year now and there's so many items I would've loved to obtain that I couldn't because I didn't have the LTs for it and didn't want to spend money.
Hot take but... I don’t think pocket camp’s furniture is that great.
Don’t get me wrong, the individual pieces are stunning, but the problem is they’re so bold and big... that they don’t go super well with anything else. On top of that the sets only include a few items that actually match each other. You can only rearrange these fortune cookie items so many ways, the actual designing part has already been done for you.
Compare the cherry blossom cookie to what people have actually managed to make with new horizon’s cherry blossom items and terraforming, now that’s actually unique and gorgeous
I think it makes sense for pocket camp to have more furniture than nh, considering it has been going for years and also that it is a mobile game with microtransictions, but i cant help but feel jealous of how amazing their items are. They are way more interactive and interesting than what is in new horizons, like i found out the other day they have a functional skating rink that villgeras actually use!!
