2017
- Splatoon 2 - 1.752.096
- Super Mario Odyssey - 1.324.280
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 1.103.744
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 771.050
Hardware: 2.719.132
Splatoon 2 attach rate was 64%, Super Mario Odyssey at 48.7%, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at 40.5%
2018
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 2.360.655
- Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu! / Let's Go, Eevee! - 1.253.677
- Splatoon 2 - 1.122.324
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 926.553
- Super Mario Party - 764.853
- Super Mario Odyssey - 575.926
- Minecraft - 525.045
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 491.648
Hardware: 3.482.388
Smash 67% attach rate for 2018, Pokemon at 36%, Splatoon 2 at 32%, MK8D at 26%, SMP at about 22%, SMO starting to fall off already at 16% and Minecraft debuted at 15%.
2019 Evergreens
- Pokemon Sword / Shield - 2.988.134
- Smash Ultimate - 1.092.397
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 628.712
- Minecraft - 620.903
- Super Mario Party - 498.857
- Ring Fit Adventure - 495.639
- Splatoon 2 - 378.340
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 301.657
Hardware: 4.493.885
Pokemon debuted at 66% attach rate for 2019, while Smash 2nd year achieved 24% attach rate, MK8D & Minecraft lead the other evergreens with nearly 14% attach rate, Minecraft, SMP follows with 11%. Interestingly Splatoon 2 really fell off in 2019 compared to MK8D and Minecraft it had just 8% attach rate for the year.
2020 Evergreens
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 5.058.226
- Pokemon Sword / Shield - 658.970
- Ring Fit Adventure - 597.160
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 356.071
- Smash Ultimate - 291.828
- Minecraft - 286.766
- Splatoon 2 - 225.989
- Super Mario Party - 217.418
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 125.314
Hardware: 2.719.132
Animal Crossing is off the charts in terms of annual attach rate for the year.
Interestingly Pokemon is performing well due to the DLCs with a 24% current attach rate for the year. Pokemon as a whole due to its pricing model has never been known as an evergreen, usually, it's legs get cut off by a subsequent 3rd version which won't happen for Sword and Shield. For example, Pokemon Lets Go sold less than Zelda Breath of the Wild in its the second year.
Ring Fit Adventure follows with 21% attach rate, this is something to track closely because it's basically talking about the potential of Ring Fit Adventure. For example, if Nintendo sells 3.3M more Switches this year at an attach rate of 20%, we can expect around 660K sales bringing total sales of the game to over 1M for 2020, so Ring Fit Adventure has a fantastic chance to finish in the top 3 best selling games on the Nintendo ecosystem for the year. If Nintendo sell 4.3M more that is 860K making it a real possibility for the game to sell over 2M before the end of the year without even waiting for shipped numbers from Nintendo themselves.
Other interesting things to notice is that MK8D is at 13%, Smash Ultimate & Minecraft at 10%, Splatoon 2 and SMP are at 8% attach rate. The main thing Nintendo needs to do for some of these games to continue to sell at around this pace is to continue to provide some type of updates to them. For example, even a single Splatfest and Demo for Splatoon 2 has helped it see some improvement YoY. The reason Smash continues to get traction is the DLC and promotion.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe maintaining such rock steady attach rate on the system, just show what a brilliant move it was to choose this game as one of the launch games on the system.
I'm also always amazed how much Zelda continues to sell even without DLC, they should think about more and longer post-launch content for the Breath of the Wild 2... Honestly to me, it's exciting to think about Breath of the Wild 2 since this will be a game that will launch with over 1 million sales in Japan, something not many thought possible prior to Breath of the Wild's launch. At this point, I'm not only expecting Breath of the Wild 2 to be a bigger hit than the debut regardless of how it's critically acclaimed, hope it comes out this fiscal year since I lost my physical copy of the original and haven't been able to play it in over a year. Also if Nintendo can use the engine for a multi-player game in the Zelda universe that would be amazing. Hyrule Battle of the Wild, battle royal lol.
Now finally what to expect from Animal Crossing next year? I'd say it will have over 40% attach rate in 2021. Based on how Splatoon 2 performed as a title launched in September that had regular updates through out its second year and was very attractive to kid. And I also expect that Nintendo will sell at least 5M Hardware in 2021. That would be 1.65M additional units by 2022, so yes the game will sell over 10M in its lifetime. Its legs in 2022/2023/2024 will still be at least MK8D level at worse case scenario it's not one of the games that gets resold that ofter. So even if the Switch sells 4M in the next 3 years that's 1.5M additional physical sales per year. I honestly think it will sell over 12M lifetime eventually since I don't expect a new Animal Crossing until 2025. It will also have 30% digital promotions at some point which will ensure that digital sales will also climb. This is on top of the fact that Japan is slowly transitioning to buying digital and this could be a trend that in 2022/2023/2024 might start to affect physical sales of Nintendo evergreens. With games now requiring constant upgrades, it's a matter of time online heavy games like Animal Crossing to start having over 30% digital share at Japan, we are not there yet but we will get there eventually. Behaviors do change over time and even in Japan retail's days are numbered, which could change how numbers get reported. Hope we continue to get Famitsu numbers since this is definitely an interesting topic for me and one of the reasons I've posted here, GAF and Resetera.
Last edited by noshten - on 12 July 2020
