Animal Crossing: New Horizons Enjoys Record-Smashing Debut In UK Charts

The United Kingdom, like most of the rest of the world, has entered a lockdown, with people being encouraged to stay home, and ahead of that, many made preparations for the same- which, as it turns out, resulted in a significant boost for boxed video game sales in the UK last week (via GamesIndustry). With over 475,000 physical copies having been sold (over three times as many as the previous week’s figures), all but two games in the top 40 saw a week-on-week increase in sales.

The game with the most impressive performance, unsurprisingly, was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which topped the charts. What was surprising, however, was just how well it performed. It has sold more copies in the UK during its launch week than the launch week sales of all previous Animal Crossing games combined (and that counts spinoffs as well), with 3.5 times the launch sales of 2013’s Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It is, notably enough, also the biggest launch week for a Nintendo Switch game ever (though Pokemon Sword and Shield would outmatch it if they were counted as a single product). All of this is in spite of the fact that these figures only account for the game’s physical sales.

Of course, Animal Crossing wasn’t the only big new release last week. Bethesda and id Software’s DOOM Eternal came out on the same day, and the shooter’s debuted in second place, though with a significant gap separating it from the top spot. DOOM Eternal’s physical launch sales are a third of what they were for DOOM (2016), though it’s likely that much of that would be offset with digital sales (for which there is no data, since Bethesda doesn’t share that).

The rest of the top 10 is occupied by perennial performers like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, FIFA 20, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Grand Theft Auto 5, Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, and more.

You can check out the full top 10 for the week ending March 21 below.

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
2. DOOM Eternal
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
4. FIFA 20
5. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
6. Grand Theft Auto 5
7. Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy
8. Forza Horizon 4
9. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
10. Red Dead Redemption 2