Animal Crossing: New Leaf Receiving Amiibo Support Later This Year

Nintendo is taking a quick break from all of the Pokemon GO hysteria to give us a truly surprising announcement: Animal Crossing: New Leaf will be getting amiibo support this autumn. Obviously you'd expect Nintendo to throw a ton of support behind amiibo considering their popularity, but the surprising bit about this announcement is that Animal Crossing: New Leaf was released in North America more than three years ago.

The update, which will be free to owners of New Leaf, will bring support for Animal Crossing amiibo cards, which launched alongside Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival last year. It will also support the rather large collection of Animal Crossing amiibo figures, along with some amiibo that have nothing to do with the series at all. Nintendo teases "collaborations" with amiibo from other games, suggesting that Splatoon amiibo will have some level of compatibility with the title.

Using the Animal Crossing amiibo cards will bring new visitors to your village, with Nintendo saying that some of these new visitors might even move into your village if they're invited. As far as what amiibo of existing New Leaf characters will do in-game, that remains to be seen. The same goes for amiibo from different games, though it stands to reason that doing something like using a Mario amiibo might unlock some kind Mario decoration or outfit in New Leaf.

Those who already own a New 3DS will be good to go once the update lands later this year. If you have an older model 3DS that doesn't have a built-in NFC functionality, you'll need to pick up Nintendo's standalone amiibo reader. Nintendo says it'll have more details on this incoming update soon, so we'll keep our eyes peeled for those.