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Animal Crossing: New Horizons sales reach 31.18 million, 5.14 million in the last quarter

eKongDiddy

eKongDiddy

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,521
Beach City
Fritz said:
Comes with the downside that this will probably change the series for ever. All the people demanding "substantial" dlc have totally different expectations than AC players used to have
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I feel like New Horizons was already a huge departure for the series. The focus is no longer on the villagers and neighborly feel the older games had. It's all about decorating, crafting, and building up your island with the villagers taking a back seat. There's a severe lack of villager interactions. I've had my villagers ask me to deliver an item once for them. No one has invited me over to their house or asked to come to mine. There's been no hide n seek games or small little games from villagers. They all feel like collectibles now with how much of the dialogue repeats. I don't even bother talking to them anymore.
 
tadaima

tadaima

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Oct 30, 2017
2,843
Tokyo, Japan
Just looking at this list, it seems ACNH is now the 15th best-selling video game of all time.

There are a lot of incredibly impressive games before it, but one things stands out to me – every other game is bundled or split over multiple SKUs.

Just focusing on single-platform games (incidentally all Nintendo-published) –

• Wii Sports Resort and MK Wii were bundled with a lot of Wii systems.
No doubt that ACNH will top WSR and possibly MKWii eventually, but it should already have passed the non-bundled SKU for WSR.

• Mario Kart 8 was split between two SKUs, and the Wii U SKU was heavily bundled.
ACNH sits behind the Switch SKU, but not by much.

• Wii Fit/Plus is almost exactly equally split between the two SKUs, each selling around 21mm units.

• Pokémon RGBY is split over 4 SKUs.

• Super Mario Bros. (NES: 40.24mm) and Wii Sports sold most of their units through bundles.

With that in mind, the original Mario Kart Wii SKU and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are probably the only two unique SKUs* that top ACNH's sales right now. I'd be interested in seeing MKWii's breakdown (though unlikely it exists to the public) to see just how close ACNH and MK8D.

Anyway, just some perspective. Incredible numbers.

* I imagine Minecraft (PC), at least one GTA V SKU (PC?), and probably some paid mobile games may be ahead too.
 
Le Dude

Le Dude

Member
May 16, 2018
4,709
USA
For comparison, Red Dead Redemption 2 was at 29M after 13 months, and took 16 months to hit 31M.

That's one of the biggest games of the generation on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

What Animal Crossing has achieved at $60 on a single platform in roughly 9 months is nothing short of incredible. It's literally one of the biggest gaming sales achievements out there.
 
Kouriozan

Kouriozan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,062
Animal Crossing is going to surpass Mario Kart, I never thought I'd see that day.
Aya Kyogoku is truly our Queen.
 
Aeriscloud

Aeriscloud

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Oct 25, 2017
2,208
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Ankha's power.

8a1.gif
 
Ragnarok Flames

Ragnarok Flames

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,631
eKongDiddy said:
I feel like New Horizons was already a huge departure for the series. The focus is no longer on the villagers and neighborly feel the older games had. It's all about decorating, crafting, and building up your island with the villagers taking a back seat. There's a severe lack of villager interactions. I've had my villagers ask me to deliver an item once for them. No one has invited me over to their house or asked to come to mine. There's been no hide n seek games or small little games from villagers. They all feel like collectibles now with how much of the dialogue repeats. I don't even bother talking to them anymore.
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i mean new horizons is such a barebones experience compared to the variety of the earlier games… Pocket Camp is a better AC game.
 
Arthands

Arthands

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,039
g-m1n1 said:
LMAO at those crazy numbers.

never tried to play a AC game, don't even know what the purpose is (only creating your own island?) :-D
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Its a life simulator game, where you live out your life on an island (with chores and things to do offline and socially online). Its something you have to play to understand its appeal, its hard to describe it in words.
 
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

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Oct 25, 2017
61,987
Serebii said:
I have been wondering if they'd do that. They've done it with Kirby and done it with Pokémon. Animal Crossing's merch requirements will need it soon enough
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Given both of those are co-ownerships, I wonder if that has more to do with it. Damn near all the Fire Emblem merch is handled by Intelligent Systems too.
 
eKongDiddy

eKongDiddy

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Ragnarok Flames said:
i mean new horizons is such a barebones experience compared to the variety of the earlier games… Pocket Camp is a better AC game.
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Sad that it's kind of true. Never got into Pocket Camp, but I see it gets way more content updates, and villagers can interact way more with the objects you place in you camp. I wanna see Curlos and Ruby go for a swim in the hot tub or play on the jungle gym! They need to bring back the option to ask the villagers for tasks. I used to play for hours just getting to know my villagers and "living" in the town helping.
 
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Deleted member 9584

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I don't know, I think FF7R might pull it off in the end. Let's wait until it's ported to Xbox, PC, PS5, and name brand toasters.
 
Lirose

Lirose

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May 30, 2018
468
Ragnarok Flames said:
i mean new horizons is such a barebones experience compared to the variety of the earlier games… Pocket Camp is a better AC game.
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Pocket Camp is a better AC game, really? The furniture is nicer for sure because they charge for it but the gameplay (what little of it) is terrible. You need to constantly grind the events to ensure you get all the rewards and it's the same few events every few weeks. Also, many of the nice furniture/clothes/accessories are leaf tickets only. There's a reason why many people demand PC furniture but yet don't want to play PC even though it's a game that can be accessed on most people's phone for free.
 

Deleted member 51789

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mazi said:
i think it got there just with the launch numbers. now it has sold more than all previous titles combined.

- Animal Crossing - 2.27M
- Animal Crossing: Wild World - 11.75M
- Animal Crossing: City Folk - 4.32M
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 12.82M

edit: the total for those 4 titles would be 31.16, which is less than new horizon's LTD. but, it's missing the japan-only n64 version (which sold 213K according to famitsu). so new horizons will be higher than all previous titles combined next quarter.
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I wonder if the original poster is maybe speculating that given the circumstances, NH will be the bestselling game in the series even when including future installments. I don't think that's definitely the case but there's certainly an argument to make that it was massively helped by worldwide lockdowns throughout the year which later games in the series probably won't see the benefit from.
 
OP
OP

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Scrawnton said:
I don't know, I think FF7R might pull it off in the end. Let's wait until it's ported to Xbox, PC, PS5, and name brand toasters.
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we should also include tesla sales.

doodlewhizz said:
I wonder if the original poster is maybe speculating that given the circumstances, NH will be the bestselling game in the series even when including future installments. I don't think that's definitely the case but there's certainly an argument to make that it was massively helped by worldwide lockdowns throughout the year which later games in the series probably won't see the benefit from.
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oh right, yeah they're probably talking about future games not being able to do these numbers. i think that's a safe bet, tbh. NH will probably end up at 40, 45+ lifetime sales. the next entry doing even 30 million would still be a huge success tho.
 

Scruffy8642

Member
Jan 24, 2020
2,849
Insane. I just wish there was more reason to return to it. I loved my first 20 hours or so, and then did dailies for the next 2 months or so realising there wasn't really any point in continuing. I want something substantial. Feels like what they've been giving us are essentially aesthetics (collectables) rather than proper playable content.
 

Deleted member 278

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Oct 25, 2017
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Serebii said:
I have been wondering if they'd do that. They've done it with Kirby and done it with Pokémon. Animal Crossing's merch requirements will need it soon enough
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If anything, I hope this means Nintendo's internal merchandising department starts expanding. They've started to do that with Mario, but Animal Crossing, Zelda, and Splatoon should be getting bigger pushes as well!
 
Mario_Bones

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Oct 31, 2017
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I'm glad a wholesome, out-of-the-ordinary game that was there for people in such a trying time found such great success... but please for the love of god tell me there's some substantial content updates coming. Even if they just bring villager interaction up to the level of past games. I wanna get back into this game but there's nothing there :(
 
Fridaynightcatlady

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Oct 27, 2017
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Yasssssss!!

Also, lmao @ all you calling NH a barebones game. You wouldn't last a whole year playing GCN, WW and CF and it shows.
 
Garlic

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To put this in perspective, the last publicly updated sales total for Skyrim is 30,000,000... If you told someone last year that Animal Crossing could very well outsell Skyrim, on a single platform in just a year, they'd have you committed
 
Kass15

Kass15

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Jan 14, 2018
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Well deserved. This game along with Stardew Valley made this past year bearable. I'm not one to continually play games but this game manages to continually draw me in. Really hopefully for more substantial updates but I understand that it's very difficult given the current circumstances. Very thankful for this game.
 
Zalman

Zalman

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Oct 25, 2017
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Animal Crossing was a top tier Nintendo IP back in the 3DS days and even then it has managed to grow significantly. Nintendo IP are just on a whole other level.
 
Giga Man

Giga Man

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Game good. Now if they want to keep those 31 million players, they better increase the limit on bridges and inclines. And if they wanna keep me, give these villagers more things to talk about!
 
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Kouriozan

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Stat

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eKongDiddy said:
I feel like New Horizons was already a huge departure for the series. The focus is no longer on the villagers and neighborly feel the older games had. It's all about decorating, crafting, and building up your island with the villagers taking a back seat. There's a severe lack of villager interactions. I've had my villagers ask me to deliver an item once for them. No one has invited me over to their house or asked to come to mine. There's been no hide n seek games or small little games from villagers. They all feel like collectibles now with how much of the dialogue repeats. I don't even bother talking to them anymore.
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Yes, I was trying to figure out why but like literally all my interactions with villagers are now "We haven't talked in forever".
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

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Oct 27, 2017
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Kouriozan said:
Even optimistic ones (AC outselling FF7R by 7M) were conservative in the end, haha.
Fun to read again, of course nobody could predict this game's popularity exploding since it was helped by Covid and this wasn't a topic in December 2019, even myself I though I'd take a few years back then, but I never doubted AC.
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Totally. Nobody expected this landslide.

It's a fun read though! Fun for people to search for themselves and see what they wrote (I, unfortunately, didn't have a prediction in that thread).

Some seriously strong opinions on how AC would or wouldn't perform. Someone in their saying they think AC:NH would probably match Personal 5 Royal sales maybe.
 
ExoExplorer

ExoExplorer

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Jan 3, 2019
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Crazy numbers! I'm so happy for the franchise.

Also is it me or has all AC NH discussion on here turn into calling it the worst game in the franchise recently? Sure it doesn't have some of the features of past entries, it changes a lot of things. Features they added like crafting, whole island customization, terraforming, and Nook miles are groundbreaking. Point is you don't have a 30+ million seller with a terrible game.

Also don't @ me but villager dialogue has always gotten repetitive if you talk to them enough. No matter which AC we talking about.
 
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