Animal Crossing: New Horizons Becomes Japan’s Second Best Selling Game

Animal Crossing: New Horizons sales have been insane. The game has flown off shelves faster than anyone could have predicted, in part due to the current lock down and health crisis. Over 22 million copies of ACNH have been sold worldwide, increasing Nintendo’s profits by over 5x, and it doesn’t look like it will be stopping anytime soon.

Game Data Library took to Twitter to share the information that this entry in the Animal Crossing series is now the 2nd best selling game ever in Japan. The only game currently beating New Horizons is Pokemon Red/Green/Blue (the original Pokemon game on the Gameboy). Game Data Library has also speculated that ACNH is going to surpass Red/Green/Blue and take the number spot of game sales in Japan.

Since June New Horizons has sold over 350k units domestically, so sales as of today are over 7.5m.

In other words its actually the 2nd all time best selling game.

The impossible is going to happen Red/Green/Blue are getting dethroned.

— Game Data Library (@GameDataLibrary) August 6, 2020

Pokemon Red/Green/Blue sold a massive 10.2 million copies in Japan. These figures are a combination of sales for all three versions of the original Pokemon game. To put into perspective just how crazy these sales figures are, ACNH has now surpassed the original Super Mario Bros. in lifetime sales.

The following list is the 10 best selling games in Japan by lifetime sales along with the system they released on.

1. Pokémon Red/Green/Blue (Game Boy) – 10,230,000
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) – 7,500,000
3. Pokémon Gold/Silver (Game Boy Color) – 7,1710,000
4. Super Mario Bros. (Famicom) – 6,810,000
5. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) – 6,490,000
6. Pokémon Diamond/Pearl (DS) – 5,850,000
7. Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) – 5,800,000
8. Pokémon Black/White (DS) – 5,530,000
9. Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire (GBA) – 5,400,000
10. Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) – 5,330,000

Pretty interesting to see two different Animal Crossing games make the top ten best sellers list in Japan. Apparently Animal Crossing: Wild World did well and sold over 5.3 million units itself.

As far as top ten best sellers goes, it looks like Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the only Nintendo Switch game to make the list so far.