On the low key, the Animal Crossing franchise has been snaking its way up to being one of Nintendo’s biggest properties. If you have any doubt of that, the latest entry in the series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, should silence any of that, just going by the game’s absolutely insane performance in Japan alone.
As translated by GamesIndustry, Famitsu revealed the extent of New Horizons’ success in the region. Just to give you an idea of how much of a runaway hit this was, it has sold more than five times the other big Japanese seller of the year, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and has already sold more than five million copies in the region alone. Keep in mind, that this only includes retail sales, which includes physical copies and download cards only.
But even when you bring digital downloads and the near-month gap between the two’s releases, it’s still a massive gap to overcome. And Final Fantasy 7 Remake saw a strong sales presence in Japan,with Famitsu estimating the game has sold just over 1 million copies in the region, so it’s not a knock on the game’s performance as much as it is a display of the staying power of Animal Crossing. This makes New Horizons the biggest game in Japan for 2020 so far by a large margin.
It’s may not be a huge surprise, however, as even months later New Horizons is still topping the Japanese chart. The last worldwide sales number we got for it was in May, and listed the game as already at 13.41 million units. It’s also certainly broken the 15 million mark by this point, and is looking to have a shot at the big 20. That is a lot of turnips.
