Nintendo Direct For Animal Crossing Mobile Happening Today

Nintendo has announced it will host a Direct event for its mobile Animal Crossing game. The direct will take place on October 25 and the pre-recorded broadcast will stream on YouTube from 12 PM JST (October 24 at 8 PM PT / October 25 at 7 AM BST). According to the Japanese Nintendo Twitter account, it will last 15 minutes.

For those hoping for some news on more Animal Crossing titles, Nintendo says on its website that there will not be any information on Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo Switch versions of Animal Crossing.

The Animal Crossing mobile game was originally scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2017, but was delayed into Nintendo's next financial year. This means the game's launch could be anytime up until March 31, 2018.

Nintendo attributed the reason for the delay to the launch of Fire Emblem Heroes and Super Mario Run, the first two mobile games released as part of its partnership with DeNA. Fire Emblem Heroes launches February 2, while Super Mario Run launched for iOS on December 15, 2016.

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto previously said the company will continue to focus on crafting original games to mobile, rather than porting old ones. This has been the case for Mario, which appeared on iOS and Android devices as an auto-runner, and Fire Emblem, which was released as a new free-to-play entry in the series.

In his Super Mario Run review, critic Peter Brown awarded it a 7/10, saying "it's easy to fault Run for various reasons, but it's hard to totally lose appreciation for how well it's brought the series' core gameplay to smartphones."

He added: "It's a shame to find that it's on the easy side and bereft of a long-lasting platforming adventure, but it's the sort of game that you'll be happy to have in your pocket."

Kallie Plagge's Fire Emblem Heroes review, meanwhile, awarded it a 6/10. "When the incentive to keep playing is to be able to keep playing, it’s easy to burn out on Fire Emblem Heroes," she said. "Aside from obtaining your favorite characters--if you even care about that--Fire Emblem Heroes becomes less and less rewarding as time goes on.

"Grinding can only be fun for so long before chasing rare allies becomes a chore, and in that sense it caters to two ends of a wide spectrum while offering little incentive for anyone in between."