Nintendo’s Animal Crossing delayed from March to at least April, as Fire Emblem Heroes arrives this week [U]

[UPDATE: Super Mario Run sales added.]

Nintendo recently announced that Fire Emblem Heroes will be arriving on iPhone and iPad on February 2, but has now quietly announced that the mobile version of Animal Crossing will launch later than expected. Animal Crossing had originally been expected to make it onto iOS devices sometime in March, but a small note in a financial statement now rules this out …

For smart devices, we plan to release the game application Fire Emblem Heroes on February 2. We will also follow last December’s release of Super Mario Run for iOS with an Android version in March. To accommodate the releases and operation of these applications, we have revised the release schedule for Animal Crossing, which we had originally planned to release during this period. This title will be released during the next fiscal year.

Nintendo’s fiscal year ends on March 31, meaning that April would be the earliest possible release date for the game, though it could be later.

Animal Crossing has been a hugely popular game on consoles, selling over 27M copies. It’s a simulation of a human player living in a village inhabited by anthropomorphic animals.

Animal Crossing let players enjoy daily life in a village filled with friendly animals. The game incorporated the passing of time (just like in the real world) and special holidays. 

The game has been released in several different versions, and it’s not yet known which features will make it into the iOS game. The iOS version of Super Mario Run racked up 10M downloads and $4M revenue on day one. The company revealed today that it has now hit 78M downloads and generated more than $50M in sales, better than analyst expectations but falling short of the company’s own targets.