So, I am wondering. Last year Switch sales exploded in Japan on the release of Animal Crossing. Is Monster Hunter Rise able to pull a similar increase in Switch sales? What do you think?

I make a bet thread out of this. You can bet that Switch will sell more or that it will sell less. I use Famitsu data as we get it.

As reference, on Animal Crossing launch week, the Switch sold 392,576 units (selling 1.88 million units of Animal Crossing that same week). That is an incredible number. But Monster Hunter also is pretty popular in japan, and the baseline of Switch is currently higher to begin with. Past MOnster Hunter titles pushed their respective hardware too. Monster Hunter World gave PS4 a +183% boost to 139,067 units (while the game sold 1.36 million units that week). Monster Hunter 4 gave the 3DS a +259% boost to 284,331 units (the game sold 1.78 million units).

There also was visible stock limitation for Switch in the last weeks, so you can assume that there is a general stock problem or the retailers hold back units for MonHun release. Or both.

So a lot of factors to consider, please place your bets!

Some Good signs

-MHR (duh) mainly being the first brand new MH on NSW
-MHR limited edition bundle
-Stock piling might be a thing which makes sense for this game
-End of quarter and FY so Nintendo will send out a lot of stock that week and wek14

I think MH is more of a buy-it-early game rather than an evergreen like AC, so I'm going to say it will sell more hardware week 1 yes, but not lifetime.

There are some signs pointing towards it happening, but I just don't see it coming close to 400k again.
My bet is below AC launch week, more specific I think it will be over 280k even without stock piling and with it might get close to 350k or even higher.

Ultimately it depends on how much stock Nintendo can provide, since I think it will all sell out 100%. If they ship 400k they will sell 400k, I just don't think they will actually ship that much.

It all depends on stock in my opinion. If Nintendo supplies enough units to retailers, then it’s very likely it will match or surpass AC week.

It will almost solely depend on the stocks

Hard to believe that anything can top Animal Crossing on Switch, but still possible if you look at the 3DS. I'd say "no", but there's still a 30 % chance imo that Monster Hunter can beat AC in launch week in Japan. I mean, the demand for the Monster Hunter demo already crashed the UK Nintendo eShop , so if people are hyped in the UK – they surely are in Japan, too ^^

It's talking about hardware sales, not if Monster Hunter can beat Animal Crossing's first week of sales (sorry if you already know this, but your post sounds to me like software sales analysis). 

In that case, a lot of it is just up to how much saturation there is in Switch purchases (doesn't seem like there's many, seems like the system still has a lot of life in it) and how much stock there is for Monster Hunter Rise's release. There is certainly a factor of how attractive the software is, but considering both series have had similar first week sales in the past (I actually didn't realize MH4 was so close to ACNH) I don't think it factors that much into the result. Especially because software backlogs are a thing, there's a lot of software in 2020 that might help convince people who were waiting to get a Switch to get it alongside the release of MHR just being a huge thing in Japan. 

Yeah, it is difficult, which makes it an interesting bet. So far people invested more than double into that it fails to bring back AC numbers, so most people are sceptical about this happening.

No, even with stock. ~400k in one week is quite the achievement for any console in Japan, so doing it twice is difficult.