Entertainment
Animal Crossing: New Horizons overtakes Pokémon as Japan’s best-selling game ever-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro
Nintendo continues to be its own biggest competitor, as Animal Crossing: New Horizons breaks a new record and Splatoon 3’s sales ramp up.
Yet Nintendo seems uninterested in further DLC (pic: Nintendo)
Nintendo continues to be its own biggest competitor, as Animal Crossing: New Horizons breaks a new record and Splatoon 3’s sales ramp up.
Although Nintendo is popular all around the world, its almost total domination of the Japanese home console scene cannot be overstated.
Splatoon 3, for example, was certainly a hit in the UK, but its launch sales in Japan were mind-blowing, making it the biggest game launch of all time in the country.
It even outperformed Animal Crossing: New Horizons, although that game has now gone on to break an even more impressive record as the best-selling game ever in Japan.
As a reminder, Animal Crossing: New Horizons only launched two years ago in 2020. Although the fact that it came out during a global pandemic, with many people confined to their homes due to lockdowns, is certainly a contributing factor to its sales success.
Still, pushing roughly 10,450,000 units in two years is an impressive feat, especially as the worldwide total is just north of 40 million. On top of that, it’s broken a record that was held for about 26 years.
The original record holder was Pokémon Red & Blue from 1996, which sold 10,230,000 copies when it launched for the Game Boy.
This is all according to Game Data Library on Twitter, which tracks Japanese game sales.
In case it wasn’t obvious enough how dominant Nintendo is in Japan, the top 20 best-selling games in the country are almost entirely from the big N, with seven of them being Pokémon titles.
The only two exceptions are Capcom’s Monster Hunter Freedom 3 for the PlayStation Portable (at 14th overall) and Square Enix’s Dragon Quest 9 for the Nintendo DS (20th overall).
Given New Horizons’ popularity, it’s peculiar that Nintendo hasn’t been adding more post-launch content. It’s been a year since the Happy Home Paradise expansion, at which time Nintendo said there wouldn’t be anymore additions.
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Given its current trajectory it wouldn’t be surprising if Splatoon 3 eventually caught up and stole the record from Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Game Data Library’s findings reveal that Splatoon 3 is at number 17 on the list, a feat it has managed after only two months on release.
It won’t happen immediately, but with that game slated to receive plenty of post-launch support through its Splatfest events and a DLC expansion, its sales still have a long way to go yet.
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