Topic. I have not heard of a game that was not packaged from the jump (ala Wii Sports) that has sold so much so fast. Anyone here know of a game that has reached or exceeded such feats?

My guess is a multiplat game. Possibly COD or GTA 5?

The only game I can think of that absolutely did is GTAV.

GTA V sold 32.5 million units in 2013

Multiplatforms yes. But for exclusives I think ACNH will be No.1

1. GTA
2. RDR
3. COD
4. Among Us
5. PUBG

Multiplats? Yes.Exclusives? I doubt a game was as fast as ACNH.To really reach 20-30 million, you need a little bit of everything.

1) Hype

2) Timing

3) Great WoM

4) Continuous presence over many months

5) A large user base

I’m sure other people will mention other factors, but these are the more notable ones I’m pointing out.For ACNH to achieve this as an exclusive is nothing short of amazing. Sure, we can use COVID as a big reason, but other games such as FFVIIR, TLoU Part 2, GoT, DOOM Eternal all had the same benefit with video games being a useful hobby to pass the time while staying at home. Why didn’t they see even half of ACNH current sales (unless there are new sales updates for these respective games)?

Whether you like it or not, ACNH just that “it” factor that pulled people in that no other game has done this year. Even they’re reaching out to audiences/demographics who rarely game (if at all). At my workplace, some of my coworkers mentioned what they were doing in AC and they are casual gamers and non-gamers. It’s pretty cool to see.

Thank you all for the answers. If the company Animal Crossing keeps is GTAV, CoD and PUBG then I think the accomplishment speaks for itself. Also, those games are multiplatform while Animal Crossing is exclusive which also makes it even more interesting. I know Wii Sports is exclusive but as I said, it was packaged with Wii so I do not count it for this conversation. Again, thank you all for the answers and insight.

Assuming Animal crossing sells more than 3.94M copies from Oct-Dec 2020, it will have crossed 30M in at most, 9 months 2 weeks (call it 10 months).

PUBG hit 50M in 16 months on the market.  It probably crossed 30M in its initial summer/fall 2017 frenzy so I bet it counts.

I don't know if we have a definitive answer on any other title doing it faster aside from GTAV, which did it by Dec 2013 (~3.5 months). 

Yearly COD never gives specific confirmed figures as far as I know (just canned "biggest $$$ opening ever" type of statements usually (someone correct me if this is wrong).

Minecraft probably did not do it, that's just a product of selling 15-20M yearly.  It may have had a year where it moved 30M units, but the launch->30M timeframe was likely not shorter than ACNH. 

PUBG hit 50M fast enough that 30M makes sense, but don't 

RDR2 crossed 30M in the quarter of Jan - Mar 2020, so that took 15-18 months.  AC will blow past that.

There aren't very many exclusives even above 30M, let alone an exclusive that moved 30M in under a year.  MK8D/PkMn RGB, Wii Sports/Fit series, NSMB - none of those sold anywhere near that fast, they took years to climb up there.

Not RDR.

We have official numbers for RDR2 and that only just hit 30 mil in March of this year, AC should be significantly faster. RDR1 "only" topped 15 mil.