Since launching earlier this year, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has seen incredible success worldwide. With a plethora of free content updates, customization options, and a seemingly never-ending list of activities for players, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the most successful Nintendo Switch titles ever. Japanese sales numbers continue to reflect this.
Shortly after its release, Animal Crossing: New Horizons became the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch game of all time, selling over twelve million copies just two months after it officially released. The game has since gone on to sell over twenty two million copies worldwide, with Japan sales accounting for nearly a quarter of the game's global sales.
Recently, Animal Crossing: New Horizons managed to surpass an impressive milestone by selling over six million physical copies in Japan. This is an incredibly rare occurrence in the country, as only five other games have managed to accomplish this feat. The last game to accomplish this was 2006's New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS, according to the Twitter account Game Data Library.
However, what's even more impressive is that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now the fastest game to accomplish this milestone. It took eight months for physical sales to reach six million in Japan, while the previous record holder, Pokémon Gold and Silver, took over thirteen months to reach that same amount in 1999. It goes to show just how infrequent this occurs in Japan when all of these games were released so far apart from one another.
In retrospect, it actually makes a lot of sense as to why Animal Crossing: New Horizons managed to achieve this goal as quickly as it did. March of 2020 was when the COVID-19 pandemic had its first major impact on the world, and with many people stuck at home during quarantine worldwide, a game like Animal Crossing: New Horizons would definitely serve as a great escape for those who needed it.
In any case, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the game. Given that the game has such an expansive playerbase that spans across entire countries, there's a lot of people who Nintendo has to cater to. With the winter update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons in full swing, players will just have to wait and see what else is in store for the popular title.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.