Just a thought that crossed my mind in these days: I have a feeling Animal Crossing is further than most of us think/hope, many expect to see the game next year but I don't think that's the case. Next year seems to be packing a bunch of releases that have been announced/teased for a while counting the new Yoshi game, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Pokémon's new mainline game, likely Bayonetta 3 and Retro's new title and possibly Metroid Prime 4, I don't think this to be the full lineup, but I also don't expect any other heavy hitters (unless they are new IPs/third party titles), just other Nintendo titles that sell moderately well like Pikmin.
Most of the staff that is involved with Animal Crossing is also tied with Splatoon 2 since the same team created the two games, while it's likely that Nintendo begun the process to split the team in order to enlarge their software output as well as allowing developers to focus 100% on both of these important IPs I think there's been too little time to form two completely independent teams, leading to development for the new Animal Crossing game being slowed down by the constant updates Splatoon 2 will keep getting for another whole year.
I'm sorry Animal Crossing fans, let me know if you disagree, I'd be happy to be proven wrong
