Animal Crossing: New Horizons Is On Course to Become Nintendo Switch's Biggest-Selling Game

Animal Crossing: New Horizons continues to see huge sales and, with 26.04 million copies sold, could well topple Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as the Nintendo Switch's best-selling game before too long. In Nintendo's latest financial results, the company announced that New Horizons had sold over 14 million copies in the first half of the Japanese financial year, keeping it above the likes of Super Mario Odyssey, Pokemon Sword & Shield, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the software best-sellers chart. It's a total sales figure only beaten by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which sold over 4 million copies in the same period, putting it at 28.99 million copies. In August, there was over 4 million copies' difference between the two games – with only 3 million copies now separating the top two, it seems Animal Crossing is continuing to outpace the leader. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/16/animal-crossing-new-horizons-review"] With the holiday season approaching (a traditionally strong period for hardware, systems' best-selling games, and bundles), it may be that Animal Crossing overtakes the racing game sooner rather than later. It's not a sure thing, of course – many first-time Switch buyers will pick up Mario Kart, meaning it could receive a boost that keeps it ahead of Animal Crossing. What is for sure is that New Horizons is comfortably the most successful Animal Crossing game of all time – Animal Crossing: New Leaf managed 12.82 million sales on 3DS, Wild World sold 11.75 million on DS, and City Folk sold 3.38 million on Wii. In no small part due to New Horizons, Switch software sales for the same period rose 71% year-on-year, and Switch hardware sales grew by 80.9% year-on-year. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.