Nintendo’s latest results reveal huge Animal Crossing sales, as Switch hardware approaches 70m

Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ huge sales performance continued this summer, with the game on course to become Nintendo Switch’s best-selling title ever.

During the six months ended September 30, 2020, New Horizons has sold some 14.27 million units, for cumulative sales of 26.04 million units, Nintendo revealed in its latest results on Thursday.

Animal Crossing remains the second highest-selling Nintendo Switch title to date, behind Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (28.99m), which itself continues to show sales momentum with a further 2.25m copies sold in the three months to September 30.

New Horizons has already more than doubled the lifetime cumulative sales of 12 million for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which was the previous best-selling entry in the series.

Nintendo increased its hardware sales forecast on Thursday, up to 24 million units from 19 million, on the back of its latest strong results.

The firm’s hardware and software sales continued to see huge year-on-year growth during the six-month period, with combined Nintendo Switch and Switch Lite hardware sales reaching 12.53 million units (an 80% increase year-on-year) for life-to-date sales of 68.30 million units.

Software sales were up 71% at 100.25 million units, with Nintendo notably reporting a strong start for Super Mario 3D All-Stars, the compilation released in September to commemorate Mario’s 35^th anniversary, with sales of 5.21 million in just a few weeks.

Paper Mario: The Origami King, released in July, sold 2.82 million units

The company continued to enjoy strong digital sales, including game purchases, add-on content and Nintendo Switch Online, with overall digital sales of 171.5 billion yen (a 139.4% increase year-on-year).

Nintendo could take advantage of PS5 and Xbox Series stock shortages and become Christmas 2020’s best-selling console in America, according to a recent note published by NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella.

“PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles should be among the hottest holiday gifting items of 2020. Units will be tough to find with continued strong demand into 2021,” the analyst wrote.

“Switch will also be a hot holiday gifting item with more households picking up multiple Switch consoles in the fourth quarter. The lack of available inventory of new PlayStations and Xbox systems will leave Switch as an appealing available option (although supply may still be difficult to find).”