Animal Crossing Direct Airs October 15th: How To Watch & Times

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A special Nintendo Direct presentation dedicated solely to Animal Crossing: New Horizons is coming in just a matter of days during October and we couldn’t be more excited for what’s in store!

Announced during the last Nintendo Direct on September 23rd, the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Direct broadcasting during the middle of October will give us an extensive look at the next major free content update for the game.

In this article, we’ll cover exactly when you can watch the Animal Crossing Direct, what we expect will be featured in it, an overview of past Animal Crossing Directs, and our general analysis.

When Is The October Animal Crossing Direct?

As of October 6th, Nintendo has just revealed on Twitter that the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Direct will air on October 15th, 2021 at 7AM Pacific Time / 10AM Easter Time!

In a neat bit of trivia fun on Nintendo’s part, it’s worth noting that October 15th is actually Brewster’s birthday in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, making the day a perfect moment to reveal his return to the series in New Horizons.

The Animal Crossing Direct has concluded and you can now watch the archived version above, or check out our Everything New In Animal Crossing Version 2.0: Brewster, Kapp’n, Cooking, Gyroids, New Shops, More Inclines article for a summary what’s new!

How Long Is The Animal Crossing Direct?

Nintendo has also revealed that the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct this October will be approximately 20 minutes long, which is a pretty substantial chunk of time! For comparison, the previous presentation held near the game’s launch was 28 minutes long.

That leaves quite a bit of time to cover a wide range of potential content updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as we’ll cover in the next sections.

How To Watch The Animal Crossing Direct

As always with every Nintendo Direct, the best three ways to watch the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Direct will be on Nintendo’s own website, Nintendo’s YouTube channel, and Nintendo’s Twitch channel. We’ll update this article with more direct stream links when available.

A little pro tip though for those of you craving news as fast as possible: in our experience, the Twitch stream tends to always be about 10-15 seconds ahead of the YouTube one.

And of course, you can watch a full archive of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Direct presentation immediately afterwards — we’ll have it posted right here on Animal Crossing World alongside all of the big news as soon as possible!

What Will Be In The Animal Crossing Direct?

To state the obvious, we know that Brewster’s return alongside The Roost café will feature heavily in the Animal Crossing Direct given what we saw in the Nintendo Direct preview trailer.

But of course, Nintendo wouldn’t host an entire dedicated Nintendo Direct for Animal Crossing: New Horizons just to show off Brewster for a few minutes, and that’s confirmed by an important ‘and more!’ note seen on the update announcement title below. The company has been content to simply release short trailers in the past for other smaller updates.

How much more though? Well, it’s hard to say for sure, but we are feeling quite optimistic this could finally be the big Version 2.0 update that many Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans have been waiting some time for. All the pieces are certainly falling into place!

Series 5 Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards

Beyond Brewster, one more piece of new content that we can consider essentially confirmed is the new Series 5 of Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards also announced by Nintendo on the same day as the September Nintendo Direct.

Oddly, this announcement didn’t make it into the proper video teaser, but was covered on both the official Animal Crossing Twitter accounts and the Japanese Nintendo website. Details are extremely light, but confirm that a new series will be released soon.

Given the timing, it’s safe to assume that the new fifth series of Animal Crossing: New Horizons Amiibo Cards will make a debut in the Animal Crossing Direct this month. And furthermore, whatever new type of in-game content that they may introduce — including the possibility of new villagers!

Brand New Villagers

Following up on the confirmation of new Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards, we do think it’s quite likely that some sort of new villagers might be revealed during the Animal Crossing Direct as part of the new cards.

As seen on the teaser photo earlier in this article that was released by Nintendo, this new series of Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards will be considered a full ‘Series 5’ by Nintendo on the same level as the previous four main series that all featured a full set of 100 cards, rather than the smaller sets seen for Welcome Amiibo and Sanrio series.

While there are obvious existing candidates such as new villagers like Raymond and new special characters like Flick introduced in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it’s difficult for us to imagine Nintendo filling up an entire new series with these pre-existing characters that would feel like a great value.

When Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched in March 2020, the online discourse around the game heavily focused around the pursuit of favorite villagers, and we bet that Nintendo knows this well too! If the developers want to make a big splash of fresh interest in Animal Crossing with this upcoming update, introducing a set of brand new villagers with the Series 5 amiibo cards would be a smart play.

Plus, it’s not an unreasonable expectation that Nintendo would like to make a return on their development expenses on the November Update if it’s as big as we hope it will be. An exciting new pack of amiibo cards for fans to purchase is a great way to monetize this otherwise free update!

Past Animal Crossing Directs

This isn’t the first time that Nintendo has broadcast an entire Nintendo Direct just for Animal Crossing, it’s actually happened a few times over the years!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Launch Direct

Most prominently, most fans will remember the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct hosted in February 2020 just prior to the launch where we got an in-depth look at everything the game had to offer.

Notably, that 27-minute presentation introduced the incredible terraforming and pathing tools that have defined this version of Animal Crossing from others! We also got our first official look at many of the game’s special characters and buildings, like Flick and Nook’s Cranny.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Welcome Amiibo Direct

But perhaps a better comparison would be the Nintendo Direct for Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome Amiibo held in November 2016, a major update to the game that could draw parallels to next month’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons update.

In the Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome Amiibo update, major new content including amiibo compatibility, hundreds of new furniture items, new villagers, a new campground area to explore, new mini-games, many qualify of life improvements, and more was implemented.

Nintendo held a dedicated Animal Crossing Direct to introduce the significant update for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and it certainly appears a similar scenario could be playing out for New Horizons this year. That Animal Crossing Direct was about 16 minutes long and can be watched in the embed above if you’re curious!

Odds And Ends

There have been a few more Animal Crossing Nintendo Directs, but we won’t cover them all in detail here due to their age, language, or relevance. Here’s a list if you’re bored and would like to go down the rabbit hole:

• Animal Crossing: New Leaf Nintendo Direct — October 5th, 2012 (Japanese, English Subtitles)
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf Nintendo Direct — February 1st, 2013 (Japanese)
• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Nintendo Direct — October 24th, 2017

Animal Crossing Direct Video Teaser

During the September Nintendo Direct, a short 40 second video teaser was aired covering much of the information mentioned in this article. You can watch it yourself below:

While we don’t know much about the upcoming Animal Crossing Direct yet, this article will be updated with all details as we learn more. It’s great just having something concrete to look forward for significant future Animal Crossing: New Horizons content.

The long drought of meaningful content that Animal Crossing fans have been experiencing since the first few months of the year is finally coming to an end!

Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for everything on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including our extensive Guides section here. Our most popular pages include What’s New In October / Halloween 2021, Spooky Set Items & DIY Recipes, Jack’s Halloween Event, Series 5 Amiibo Cards, Halloween Costumes, New October Critters, Acorn & Pine Cone DIY Crafting Recipes, Redd Art, and Sea Creatures.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons News Nintendo Direct Version 2.0 Update