´Animal Crossing´ to become Massive Multiplayer community

´Animal Crossing´ for Wii is set to become a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) community, UK gaming magazine Edge reports. According to CVG, the magazine´s latest issue announces that ´Animal Crossing goes MMO´, citing "a Japanese source".

Edge´s online presence, Next-Gen, adds more detail to the story:

Animal Crossing for the Wii will be an MMO/social networking title. It’s no great surprise – in a few short years, Animal Crossing has become one of Nintendo’s most-loved and top selling franchises (over seven million copies sold), particularly in Japan. Nintendo refers to the title as a ‘communications game’ rather than a videogame, and playing already depends on real-world timekeeping, weather patterns, social conventions, and above all else economic interactions. In almost every way, Animal Crossing has always been the perfect MMO concept, and this development is simply a fulfilment of that promise.

The game has yet to be officially announced (although Nintendo has at least confirmed that an Animal Crossing game is in development for the Wii) and so details are not so much thin on the ground as nonexistent. But there are some indications of where the game will take the series: Katsuya Eguchi, head of development for the project, has made relatively non-committal noises thus far, but hinted that connection to mobile phones and PCs (for basic functions such as messages) would be included in an interview as far back as last year. Animal Crossing’s earlier iterations already feature travelling between towns, the ability for players to live in the same town (though not to play in it at the same time), and the ability to design your own clothing – and to sell it.

I predicted just this last month, speculating about what happened to that elusive September surprise NOA president Fils-Aime promised - and what it might turn out to be.

Most interesting will be to see how Nintendo incorporates the Friend Code system into this game. How limited will communication be between players who have not yet registered one another? What kind of exchange is available to players who have? And how do you get from the former state of affairs to the latter?

Sources: Next-Gen, CVG
Thanks to: Joystiq, NeoGAF