Animal Crossing: New Horizons sets record for best single game launch on the Nintendo Switch
Animal Crossing: New Horizons hasn't even been out for a full week, yet the game is already setting records. Japanese magazine Famitsu and sales tracker Media Crate have reported their preliminary sales results for the latest entry into the Animal Crossing series, claiming that the game sold over 1.88 million physical copies alone, in its first three days on the market. Included in that figure is the standalone game itself, pre-order cards, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons Switch bundles that were sold on store shelves in Japan. In the UK, the game had just as much success, surpassing launch sales for all previous Animal Crossing games, combined. For comparison, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate managed 1.2 million sales in its first three days in Japan, while New Horizons sold 3.5 times more than its predecessor New Leaf. It also has the highest launch sales of any Switch game, technically, beating out Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Shield, though not outperforming both Pokemon titles when combined together.
Considering the unreported digital sales numbers, it's easy to guess that the true sales for the game are even more impressive, especially with the advent of COVID-19 occurring worldwide, pushing consumers to refrain from getting physical media at this time. Sales of Nintendo Switch systems are also up, pushing the hardware numbers up to 392,576 units shifted this week, which is more sales than the console's launch week in March 2017 (~330,000).
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