Within the recent Nintendo investor meeting, it was revealed that Animal Crossing: New Horizons reached 26 million sales, allowing the series to reach 60 million sales worldwide.
New Horizons has a been hit all year long. It became the best-selling entry in the series almost overnight. In the last fiscal quarter, it was able to sell 4 million. Due to this last quarter, the IP is now a 60-million seller. Let’s rank each game in the series by its total sales:
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) – 26.04 million
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf (2012) – 12.82 m
- Animal Crossing: Wild World (2005) – 11.75 m
- Animal Crossing: City Folk (2008) – 3.38 m
- Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (2015) – 3.04 m
- Animal Crossing [GameCube] (2001) – 2.3 m (U.S. & Japan data only)
- Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival (2015) – 20,303
Keep in mind that Nintendo tends to stop updating numbers for certain games even if they continue to sell. The numbers above could be higher than reported.
The first Animal Crossing game released on the N64 in April 2001, only in Japan. The N64 version, Dōbutsu no Mori [Animal Forest] (series name in Japan) would get a deluxe version on GameCube called Dōbutsu no Mori+ [Animal Forest +] in late 2001. This GameCube version would be localized for the west in 2002 as Animal Crossing. The concept of the series is creating your villager avatar and managing a rural village in real-time based on the system’s internal clock; basically, if it’s winter and nighttime in real-life, it’s the same in the game. The series would go on to have a total 4 mainline games, 2 spin-off games, and a mobile game. Villager and Isabelle from the series are also playable in the Super Smash Bros. series.
Dave’s first Nintendo platform was the GameCube when he was age 7; however, he was introduced to Nintendo through Duck Hunt on NES.