Animal Crossing: New Horizons Japanese Sales Pass 8 Million

Sales for Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons have surpassed 8 million in Japan, with it still appearing in eighth place in the weekly sales ranking in that country. The game will be five years old in March 2025. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

Nintendo is dominating the Japanese market, as all of the top best-selling games for the past week were for Switch games. Here is the ranking list:

1. Super Mario Party Jamboree
2. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
3. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
4. Minecraft
5. Mario & Luigi: Brothership
6. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
7. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
9. Pokemon Scarlet, Violet
10. Nintendo Switch Sports

The same goes for hardware as well. Between December 16 and 22, 2024, the Switch sold 14,065 units, the Switch Lite sold 34,542, and the Switch OLED sold 55,544. Meanwhile, the closest to reaching those numbers was Sony’s PS5. The PS5 sold 15,213 units, the Digital Edition sold 4079, and the Pro sold 5358.

Reasons behind the high sales of Nintendo hardware and software are likely due to the Christmas season, and both the games and consoles being more family-friendly. One could conceivably purchase a game for a child or a family member, so that everyone could play it together. Animal Crossing: New Horizons in particular is a game that many people got into during COVID-19 pandemic, as many people were stuck at home with nothing to do during quarantine.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is readily available on the Nintendo Switch.