The Animal Crossing: New Horizons Thread

[Dulfite]

RolStoppable said:

Dulfite said:

I don't think the $60 is going to impact anyone. For starters, $60 isn't valued at what it was when games started being sold for that amount due to inflation.

Let's compare the evergreen 3ds games to the evergreen Switch ones using VGC numbers currently in the database when you look each of these games up (this will save me time from having to find articles with official numbers):

3ds                                                                                          Switch                                                

Super Mario 3d Land - 11.56 million (15.5% attach ratio)              Super Mario Odyssey - 11.71 million (34% attach ratio)
Mario Kart 7 - 15.49 million (20.5% attach ratio)                           Mario Kart 8 delux - 13.05 million (38% attach ratio)

Animal Crossing New Leaf - 10.9 million (14.6% attach ratio)         Animal Crossing Switch (29%???)

I think, based on this, that Animal Crossing Switch will at least double in attachment ratio what it sold on 3ds based on how Odyssey and Kart 8 delux performed. Honestly, the ceiling is higher because it won't be a re-release like 8 delux was to 8 (plenty of people that owned 8 on Wii U, which did really well itself, did not buy 8 delux, yet it still has done amazingly). Switch attachment rates are just off the charts, and that won't change with New Leaf. If we double the attachment rate conservatively to 29% what the Switch install base is right now, that puts Animal Crossing Switch sales at 9.8 million, but if we project the Switch hardware to be at least double what it currently is when its all said and done, I think Animal Crossing Switch will shatter 15 million and will easily reach 20 million sales based on this data. The question should be whether or not it hits 25 million, and of that I'm more skeptical.

That's a fundamentally flawed method to analyse and predict sales. Attach rate is a terrible metric.

Because Switch will sell more than 100m units based on historical comparisons plus circumstances unique to Switch, your conservative attach rate puts Animal Crossing already above 30m copies. Attach rates go down as the total number of consoles sold grows, that's why this sort of analysis doesn't work. Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 started out at above 30% for their attach rate, then that value slowly decreased over time to what it is now.

What is clear is that Switch hardware sales won't put an artificial ceiling on the potential of Animal Crossing sales - the Wii U is an example of a console that limited software sales potential and a good example of that is Mario Kart 8. What is also clear is that Animal Crossing won't cost $60 throughout its entire life, so the reasoning of Lryu222 also has a fundamental flaw - Nintendo Selects at a notably cheaper price have been a common thing on Nintendo consoles and Animal Crossing for Switch will launch during the first half of the console's life, so it has years to sell.

A worthwhile basis for a prediction of Animal Crossing sales is that games on Switch are selling faster than on the 3DS and in some cases have already exceeded the lifetime sales of their 3DS counterparts - the series that have yet to do so are usually on track to pull it off, such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The current uncertainty is how good of a sequel the upcoming Animal Crossing game will be, but unless Nintendo messes it up, it should at the very least sell more copies than New Leaf because that's the trend of Switch software sales. I don't disagree with your conclusion that the game should be able to sell more than 15m copies, but the way you arrived there is heavily flawed.

I'm fully aware the attach rate will go down, but I'm sorry I didn't include that assumption on my part in my writing. Regardless, I think it is reasonable to assume it will hit at least 20 million based on what I suspect the attach rate will be in the end (at least the 15-20%).