It’s pretty obvious that Animal Crossing: New Horizons would make some serious waves in the video game industry. The question was, just how much of an impact would it have? Apparently, people were more than ready for Nintendo’s newest entry in the series, as Japanese website Famitsu has reported that the game has sold more than 1.88 million copies in its native country for first three days of being available to the public. Thanks to this, it is now the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch game in Japan, a monumental feat considering the games that have come before it.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons new record-breaking numbers officially dethrones the previous holder for fastest-selling Switch title, Pokemon Sword and Shield. The latter sold over 1.36 million copies in it’s first three days, and before that the record belonged to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate which stood at 1.24 million units. Animal Crossing: New Horizons absolutely dominated in these statistics. On top of that, it also destroyed the previous entry, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, by a wide margin as that game sold 722,000 units its first three days.
The success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons also saw a massive jump in sales for Switch consoles across Japan in general. Famitsu reports that the system sold over 392,500 in the last week, which is a 585% increase from the previous week. This statistic includes both the Nintendo Switch and Switch Lite, and to say that is an absurdly huge spike in sales is an understatement. In addition, this has catapulted the Switches’ sales in Japan to over 13 million sold, surpassing the Nintendo Wii’s lifetime sales in the country.
Let’s not forget that we’re still waiting on the North American numbers to come rolling out, as well as the rest of the world. We should expect those numbers to increase exponentially when they are released, and it wouldn’t surprise us if the game becomes one of the highest-selling games of the year. Fans have been eagerly waiting to get Tom Nook his Bells, and they made sure he got them in spades. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now available for the Nintendo Switch.