At one point a few weeks ago, it seemed like nearly everyone was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch, at least anecdotally.
Nintendo’s latest earnings report for the April to June quarter confirms New Horizons drove significant sales during the quarter, resulting in operating profit being up 428 percent year-over-year to 145 billion yen (roughly $1.8 billion CAD) on $357 billion yen (about $4.5 billion CAD) in revenue.
Further, in total, Nintendo has now shipped 61.44 million Switch consoles, despite Switch and Switch Lite shortages during the early days of the pandemic. This brings the system’s total sales only 470,000 units short of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) but still well behind the Wii’s 101.63 million.
Regarding Animal Crossing: New Horizons, specifically, the game sold more than 10 million units during the quarter, amounting to total sales of 22.4 million. The Japanese gaming giant says that of all the new Switch consoles purchased between April and June, more than half played New Horizons on the first day of owning the system.
New Horizons is also already the second best-selling Switch title behind Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and has sold over 10 million times more than any previous Animal Crossing title. On the other hand, Ring Fit Adventure, Nintendo’s fitness-focused game that features an exercise resistance band, sold four million copies during the quarter, though it’s still pretty challenging to find.
“Demand for this new proposal from Nintendo of exercising by playing an adventure game was so much higher than our forecasts that the global supply has been unable to keep up since release,” Nintendo said in a press statement.
Prepare yourselves, brave explorers! Set-off for the lush planet PNF-404 when #Pikmin 3 Deluxe lands on 10/30! This version features multiple difficulty modes, new side-story missions featuring Olimar & Louie, and all the DLC from the original release. https://t.co/UbljqJUQjX pic.twitter.com/7oht5o5mZI
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 5, 2020
The rest of Nintendo’s plans for the year are unclear, with the company remaining quiet about upcoming titles.
That said, the gaming giant recently announced Pikmin 3 Deluxe, a port of the Wii U game initially released back in 2013.
Source: Nintendo
