Japanese Charts: Animal Crossing: New Horizons Overtakes Pokémon Sword And Shield's Lifetime Sales

Holy crap, FF7 dropped insane. Sad to see. Hurray for Animal Crossing, it finally beat Pokemon. But it's so lonely at the top

I feel like I shouldn't be surprised but I am

Comes down to one thing, Pokemon games have not adapted to modern standards, and Animal Crossing has. AC feels fresh and crazy relevant, whereas Pokemon(at least on consoles) feels like a 20 year old game that just barely hits status quo. Pokemon Go is different story.

I DO care about then Dex cut and seeing Animal Crossing do better is nice. Not that it will matter as Pokemon still made bank.

Seems like FF7R drove a lot of PS4 sales in Japan, esp compared to AC:NH's impact on NSW sales, although I've heard there has been NSW shortages, so it might be the reason those numbers are lower...

I'm not surprised. And while I won't go as far as calling Sword and Shield bad games, they were terribly disappointing in so many areas. Especially compared to the generation before it. And that's really saying something considering how flawed Gen 7 was/is. All of that's aside (but not completely divorced) from the Pokedex issue.

And also almost beat SSBU life time sales

Looks like it will be ahead of Ultimate next week as well if this keeps up.

Hey look, the devs that respected their fans by saying they wanted to delay their game to give it the extra work it needed and have committed frequent free content updates are getting rewarded for it.

Wow, it'll be the biggest selling Switch game of all time next week! Its continued momentum is insane, I really thought it would have slowed down by now.

if game freak left sword and shield in the oven for just a bit more... but nope they wanted that christmas cash. meanwhile animal crossing took its time and became a better product as a result (yea im aware of the corona stuff)

Not surprising, it's the Smash effect but made even more extreme because of the pandemic. When you release a big game with nothing surrounding it for months, sales will be boosted.

Good to hear. I wouldn’t say Sword and Shield were bad but they were lacking, unpolished, and uninteresting. I know this whole pandemic thing is boosting the sales for Animal Crossing but the game deserves it at least.

For both AC and Pokemon I played the originals, then skipped all the versions until the latest ones. AC feels like it has grown and moved forward. Pokemon Sword felt like it had gone backwards from Pokemon Blue. It felt so empty and shallow.

Animal Crossing New Horizons is a far superior game than Sword and Shield so it deserves higher sales

Good lord, this game's sales have exploded worldwide. Animal Crossing has been big for a while, but it's about to become Nintendo's single biggest game on the platform. And that'll likely continue, because, while we'll get other Pokemon games on Switch and probably a new Mario Kart at some point, this is it for Animal Crossing on Switch.

@kyleforrester87 I haven’t played Pokemon since red and blue but I have picked up Sword but only played for an hour. I haven’t formed an opinion yet I just didn’t have time when I bought it. Why is it not good in your opinion?

If it’s not the dex cut what makes them bad entries?

I love how people are assuming Pokemon Sword/Shield's supposed bad quality has "hurt" its sales when it is on track to be the best-selling Pokemon entry in over a decade.

Animal Crossing New Horizons is a freak of nature and is very likely the fastest-selling game of all time in Japan once digital sales are included. Nothing outside of the next mainline Animal Crossing game on Switch 2 has a shot at selling as much.

Avid fan of the series since Wild World, and this success makes me happy. Even happier than Coach and Agnes whom I found singing together with no accompanying music in my plaza. So of course I put some music on for them.

Seriously, the singing feature is adorable.

Also those FFVII Remake numbers are kind of surprising. I would have expected more sales for such a hugely anticipated game, but I guess maybe FF is just more niche than Animal Crossing. I want to play it, but I'm waiting for the eventual "FFVII Remake Complete" on like...PS6. Maybe PS5 if we're lucky.

Looks like the PlayStation got a chance to kick Nintendo’s butt for a few weeks...with those numbers!

Looks like it will beat Smash Ultimate pretty soon.

@meeto_1 Once upon a time, say in the GameCube era, I think we would have been ecstatic to have a game like Sword / Shield on a home console. Problem is, we're almost two decades past the time where they would have been even slightly impressive. Are they functional? Sure, everything (mostly) works. But nothing about the games indicate the dev team had any real passion for making a modern, ambitious product.

@Quarth Animal Crossing will outsell Smash Bros next week.

@westman98 Most people are just saying AC deserves the higher sales here, not necessarily that Sword/Shield sold poorly or that the sales were hurt.

I really enjoyed sword and shield despite the millions of flaws but animal crossing is just the much better game.

@TeslaChippie I get it. I remember when I played the first hour before stopping that it seemed cheap in terms of production in many small areas. No voice acting, animals in the wild moving around aimless like robots appearing out of thin air with rough animation.

I hope with the next one they approach it with more ambition like We saw with the other big franchises.

ACNH take over Pokemon Sword / Shield sales because in ACNH you can become a Pokemon trainer with All outfits from each generation and you can design your island like on Pokemon games.
That's more appealing in my opinion.

@Giygas_95
I saw a lot of peoples uploaded ACNH videos with animal villagers singing KK Bubblegum by the most.
But, when they sing KK Metal, Hooshaa...!!

@Anti-Matter Yeah they go hard when K.K. Metal is on. 😂

If you had told me a decade ago that Animal Crossing would become one of Nintendo's biggest franchises I probably wouldn't have believed you. Before a New Leaf it always seemed pretty niche. Glad to see it's become so successful though!

@kyleforrester87 - I wouldn't call them bad games, but they definitely don't lift a finger to make the changes more or less relevant.

They could have gone a direction that made the cut make sense, they could have done something with Gigantimaxing to make it feel like it made sense, they could have done more with the open world that made sense.

But they didn't, none of those moves are inherently bad. But... the cut was just placated to a patch to fill a void, Gigantamax is just Gen 8 Gimmick, the open world is just a broad bowl of a route.

None of this felt like a new direction, that ain't bad... but that's Pokémon's version of City Folk. Just so happens the last 3 gens are Pokémon's version of City Folk.

Good! Animal Crossing deserves it very much. Very lovely game.

@BenAV admittedly I’ve never been that into Pokémon Games beyond the designs and other stuff, but the games always seem at least a decade behind. An argument can be made for the whole hidden values game that’s there but idk, just kinda equals bad game design in my book

It's pretty much guaranteed that New Horizons with pass up Smash Ultimate next week too. Switch's big sellers are insanely popular.

Good. Like many are saying, I dropped money on Pokemon because of how attached I am to the series, but the quality of Animal Crossing is just leagues ahead of it. There is just so much attention to detail it. Granted, maybe it's not fair because they were/are allowed to push-back and delay their launch, but even comparing Pokemon's stiff animations and still environments to just how alive my island feels is night and day.

Good. It actually deserves those sales SO much more than Pokemon. For obvious reasons.

Every story makes me wonder more if I’ll regret skipping Animal Crossing this generation. But given my playtime on the previous entries I may as well throw all my other games in the bin if I succumb.

Is Smash always top 5 still or doing a bit better?

@DonutYoshi It just isn't developed by Nintendo, so the fanboys hate on it. Just ignore them, majority of them haven't even played the game, they just watch YouTube videos all day and be lazy critics.

Worth remembering AC has released at the best possible time, people are at home bored and here's the game what is perfect for solving that issue. I'm willing to bet sales wouldn't be as impressive if Covid 19 wasn't a thing and life was normal, i think people hating on S&S don't understand that.

Makes sense. Animal Crossing may not have been released with all the features New Leaf had, but it didn't feel like a rushed game so much as a game that gets better over time (these are the developers behind Splatoon, right? So it makes sense they'd do it this way.) Sword and Shield was a rushed game that had to come out before the holidays, and look what it bore. I can only speak as a spectator, but I know a mess when I see one; regardless of how good the game actually is (or rather how good people will tell me it is; I've lost interest in the series since Black & White) it has received way too much negative press that could've been avoided if it was delayed to a summer release.
...Now I must brace myself for people who take this as me hating on SwSh rather than simply stating my observations of how it was released.

Figure I'll finally comment on Pokemon Sword/Shield way after the the rush of negativity over dexit happened. They're good Pokemon games. And just okay games... If they were 49.99. Outside of my first playthrough, I haven't been compelled to go back and play the games. I didn't care for Pokemon being cut, because they'll all be back eventually, and in the anime, they're always gonna be there which is what I watch and care most about.

period. exactly.

i woudn'd be suprised if Animal Crossing New Horizon become Switch best selling game and Animal Crossing series best selling games in this year.

@WallyWest

Sales wouldn’t be AS high, but Horizons would still be selling incredibly well. New Leaf was one of the best selling games on 3DS, and Horizons is even better.

I actually really enjoy Sw/Sh and still play from time to time to breed Pokémon, but New Horizons is definitely the better game.

Does anyone here has a turnip price over 300 bells this week?

This week was worse than the oil price plummet

Er, it is possible to enjoy both Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon Sword and Shield, you know! You're even allowed to prefer the former and still be happy about the latter's good sales! Sword and Shield may not be game-changing in the way that New Horizons seems to be, but they're not bad games at all. Animal Crossing isn't my kind of game and I have no plans to buy it, but I'm delighted that it has been so successful (even if that success might partly be down to the world's current plight).

@WallyWest I think the current situation certainly helped to an extent. But before COVID-19, there was a feverish clamor for a new Animal Crossing game, tremendous hype for New Horizons after it was announced and huge groundswell of exposure for the series as a whole. Surprisingly, it seemed to ramp up after the delay was announced. So I think the game would have been successful regardless.

There is way more to this than “Sword and Shield are bad.” Way, way more.

A good game selling more than a bad game, wow how surprising

When was the last time Japan had a physical million seller, starting with "4"?

It will take AC no more than 3 weeks to achieve this, and at this rate I'll be surprised if it doesn't hit 5 million by the end of the year.

Include digital sales, and wait for switch hardware to start flowing again ... And you have some scary numbers.

Well, there are 2 nintendo switch, 1 is lite and 1 normal in my house, and 2 copys of the game, one digital and one physical in my house alone.
One is mine and the other my girlfriend, she is not a gamer, but she has already played about 15 hours in the last 2 games with me...

@TheRealKyleHyde I personally enjoy them both. People are just super-nitpicky and can hold serious grudges.

I guarantee you Nintendo was going to go all out with the next Animal Crossing Next Generation. Now that they know this game is quite possibly the highest selling game in the history of Japan of all time.

Sword and Shield are a fantastic game and I will NOT yield on that point. But I love me some Animal Crossing too.

The thumbnail suits the new nicely. Then again, Squirtle there seems to enjoy it...

Whoa, was not expecting FF7 to plummet that much on week two.

@Margeta AC’s impact on Switch sales has to essentially run the country dry of every Switch available. It didn’t sell 20k units because only 20k people wanted Switches. It sold 20k because that was basically all the Switches they to sell, after weeks of huge demand and production issues resulting in reduced supply.

I tried to enter a lottery this week on the Japanese retailer Biccamera’s website. Winners of the lottery would in with the chance to win... the option to buy a Switch at RRP. No discount, no nothing, just a Switch at normal price.

The website crashed within an hour. The volume of people applying for a chance to be able to buy a Switch at RRP was too great and the servers couldn’t handle it. So yeah, you can’t even apply to a lottery to have a chance of buying a console, such is the current demand.

No game is going to boost that Switch sales number. The only thing that can boost it is more Switches actually on sale.

Briliiant title pic

@westman98 Sounds like a safe bet. What are your predictions for AC's final lifetime sales?

@Quarth
With retail + digital, probably 8-9 million copies in Japan and 20-25 million copies worldwide. I'm leaning toward the higher end of those expectations.

@westman98 Sounds reasonable.

Pokemon is the best example of a cookie cutter game