Still Waiting for Isabelle: The Great “Animal Crossing” Summoning Circle Fails Again

For fans of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the last five years have been an exercise in patience. Since its monumental, pandemic-fueled launch in 2020, the game has sold nearly 50 million copies, making it a cultural phenomenon and one of Nintendo’s best-selling titles of all time. But for a community that has spent years cultivating their perfect islands, the desire for a new game, an expanded experience, has become a fervent wish. So, in the days leading up to today’s highly anticipated Nintendo Direct, fans of the cozy life simulator took to social media to conduct a new ritual: a literal “summoning circle.” The goal? To use their collective energy to manifest a new game. But in a move that has left many fans both heartbroken and confused, the ritual failed. There was no new Animal Crossing game, and not even a hint of one.

The Ritual and the Disappointment

The “summoning circle” is a viral meme within the gaming community, often used to express a strong desire for a game’s announcement. Fans will share pictures of a drawn circle, often with an image of a character or a game logo, to jokingly “summon” the news. This time, the Animal Crossing community took it to a new level. Memes and artwork flooded Twitter and Reddit, showing meticulously crafted summoning circles made of items from the game: gyroids, peaches, turnips, and the ever-present bags of bells.

The logic behind the ritual was sound, at least to the community. With the Nintendo Switch 2 on the horizon, a new Animal Crossing game seemed like the perfect launch title. The original New Horizons was a console seller, a game that brought millions of new players into the Nintendo ecosystem. What better way to repeat that success than with a sequel? The disappointment, therefore, was profound.

While Nintendo announced a number of other “cozy” games, such as Pokémon Pokopia and a new Tomodachi Life game, many fans felt that these titles were not a true replacement. As one fan on Reddit put it, “I’m so bummed. They’re releasing tons of games with the exact same concept as Animal Crossing, but we don’t get a new version? Nothing at all?” The community feels that Nintendo is deliberately holding back its biggest card, a move that is likely a calculated business decision.

A Strategic Silence: Why Nintendo is Waiting

Nintendo’s decision to not announce a new Animal Crossing is almost certainly strategic. The original New Horizons is still selling millions of copies a year and remains one of the best-selling games on the platform. The company is also heavily promoting its other cozy life simulation titles, such as Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Pokémon Pokopia. Announcing a new Animal Crossing game now would almost certainly cannibalize the sales of those other titles.

Furthermore, as analysts have pointed out, a new Animal Crossing game would be the ultimate “killer app” for the Nintendo Switch 2. When sales of the new console begin to slow down, Nintendo can pull out its biggest gun and create a new surge of sales. By holding back the announcement, Nintendo ensures that it has a powerful, guaranteed-to-be-successful title in its back pocket.

While the wait is frustrating, it is clear that Nintendo is playing a long game. The company is not only managing its own releases but also trying to capitalize on the success of the “cozy game” genre that New Horizons helped create. The high CPC keywords for these discussions, such as “Animal Crossing Switch 2,” “Nintendo Direct news,” “new cozy games 2026,” and “Animal Crossing summoning circle,” all point to a passionate and ongoing conversation about the future of this iconic franchise. For now, fans will have to be patient, but one thing is for sure: when Nintendo finally decides to announce the next Animal Crossing, the “summoning circle” will finally be complete.