Somehow missed this thread, sry @tbone51 but after seeing the launch it was easy to see it will become the Top Selling Game of all time in Japan by 2022:
By the way I always view Pokemon Red, Blue, Green + Yellow as the Top Selling game(thus 12M is what I was expecting by 2022)
This is after Q1 had wrapped up:
| noshten said: Amazing Q1 Results for Switch Software, due to the launch of Animal Crossing New Horizons, Switch Top 10 Software have already sold over 4.5M, thats an increase of 89% compared to Q1/2019. For the entire 2019 Switch Top 10 titles sold 8.2M TOTAL. So Switch Software Top 10 Software Sales in 2020 are already close to 55% compared to last year's total, with three quarters left to go. Also this doesn't paint the full picture since Animal Crossing is likely to have at between 1M to 1.5M Digital Sales in Japan in the past three weeks. No doubt the game has shipped over 4M for Q1 with digital. Animal Crossing has already sold what Pokemon Sword / Shield - 2019's Top Selling physical game did in just two weeks. It will easily surpass 4.5M physical + 6M physical + digital this year in Japan due to its wide demographical appeal and historic legs. I cannot even predict how high it will end up but its going to be the Top Selling Japanese Game of all time by 2022 if digital is counted. Constant updates/events and price cuts to the Switch HW in the future will ensure multiple Switch devices with Animal Crossing per household in Japan. |
If I were to make a prediction for shipped+digital by year:
- 2020 - >9.5M
- 2021 - >11.5M
- 2022 - >13M
Simply put I expect the game to sell >2M next year, all they really need is 33% off during any month of the year and they would probably bring down the eShop. Demographics buying Animal Crossing: New Horizon don't have a ton of other games too chose from, so it would always be their first purchase. So even in 2022 sales would still be higher than what Splatoon 2 did in it's second year. The team behind Animal Crossing and Splatoon knows how to keep interested high in their GaaS games, so I expect substantial DLC is planned until at least the end of 2022.
