Animal Crossing: New Horizons Is the Second-Best Selling Game on Switch

By Joseph Stanichar | August 6, 2020 | 1:45pm

Image via Nintendo

Games News Nintendo

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Is the Second-Best Selling Game on Switch

Nintendo has published its hardware and software sales for the financial quarter, and hoo boy do people love the new Animal Crossing.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t just the best-selling game in the series by a long shot: it’s the second-best selling game on the Switch! Sitting at 22.4 million sales, the only Switch game with more copies sold is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has been out nearly three years longer than New Horizons. At this rate, Animal Crossing will likely be the best-selling Switch game of all time soon, perhaps by next quarter.

It’s not hard to see why the game is so popular now, however. Animal Crossing has always been beloved, but New Horizons had the benefit of launching at almost the exact time people started locking down public spaces as the coronavirus started spreading across the world in March. Left without real-life friends to hang out with, New Horizons offers a bright, cheery world for people to interact with other friends online, as well as a whole town of virtual, happy-go-lucky creatures. Even people who don’t normally play videogames have picked this one up, which likely explains the astronomical sales.

Here are the current top 10 best-selling games on Switch:

1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 26.74 million units
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 22.4 million units
3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 19.99 million units
4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 18.6 million units
5. Pokémon Sword and Shield – 18.22 million units
6. Super Mario Odyssey – 18.06 million units
7. Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee – 12.2 million units
8. Super Mario Party – 10.94 million units
9. Splatoon 2 – 10.71 million units
10. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 7.44 million units

Although it hasn’t quite placed on the top 10 list, Ring Fit Adventure sales have seen a comeback thanks to recent restocks and increased demand likely due to gym closures, with its current total sitting at above four million. It’s nothing on Wii Fit’s 22.67 million or Wii Fit Plus’ 21.13 million, but still pretty good considering the game hasn’t even been out for a full year.

As far as hardware, the Switch itself has seen 61.44 million units sold, with 406.67 million games sold on it. Doing some simple math, that means there are 4.53 times more Switches than the lifetime sales of its predecessor, the Wii U.

For comparison between other current consoles, that puts it ahead of the Xbox One’s roughly 50 million, but still far behind the PlayStation 4’s 110.4 million. It’s worth noting that both consoles had a head start, launching in 2013 while the Switch launched in 2017. Plus, Microsoft has recently shifted away from pure Xbox sales as its goal since it’s been putting all titles on PC and adding its upcoming xCloud streaming service, so it’s not exactly a fair comparison.

As far as Nintendo’s own systems, the Switch’s sales exceed the Wii U’s 13.56 million, the GameCube’s 21.74 million, the Nintendo 64’s 32.93 million and the SNES’ 49.1 million. It’s just barely shy of the NES’ 61.91 million, then the 3DS’ 75.87 million, the Game Boy Advance’s 81.51 million, the Wii’s 101.63 million, the Game Boy’s 118.69 million and the DS’ unbelievable 154.02 million units sold.

Overall, the Switch stands at the 13th best-selling console, although again, it’s just a few thousand more sales away from overtaking the NES. Being a hybrid, it’s the eighth best-selling home console and the sixth best-selling portable console.

Is that enough numbers for ya?

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