
Nintendo has released its financials for the third quarter of the current fiscal year and the latest results have revealed that twenty-nine Switch games have sold over a million copies in the last nine months.
Of this list of million-sellers, twenty of them are published by the platform holder and nine belong to third-party publishers. Of course, many of the games in this category sold well over a million copies worldwide, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons alone bagging over 19 million sales across physical and digital. That's the 'sell-in' figure, including all physical copies shipped to stores although not necessarily sold yet — the sell-through figure stands at 16.2 million.
Evergreen racer Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has picked up a cool 8.64 million sell-in sales in the last nine months, with the limited-time Super Mario 3D All-Stars coming in third with 8.32 million units. According to the results, total software sales grew by 43% year-on.year to a very healthy 176.1 million units.
Here's the full list of million-selling Nintendo-published games in the financial year 2020/21 so far, including Apr-Dec 2020 — year-to-date — sell-in sales followed by life-to-date sales in brackets, as per Nintendo's report:
*Does not include Japan sales as Koei Tecmo publish the game in that territory
It's an impressive list, that's for sure. Switch has also overtaken 3DS in overall lifetime sales after just four years on the shelves, so with three months left until the end of the financial year, Nintendo has a lot to be confident about already when their end-of-year results roll out in three months' time.
Impressed by that list? Let us know which of those sales figures have been bumped by you below.
[source nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 44
We have new Pikmin 3 numbers. That makes it the best selling game in the series
Wow, that was fast.
And still haven't celebrate its 1st Anniversary.
It's so weird but nice to see a Zelda game outselling both a Pokemon and a 3D Mario game (and also a 2D Mario game but that one is only a port).
Especially considering Zelda-games never sold that crazy compared to Pokemon, I mean Pokemon games often sold between 14-18mio in the past but Zelda games often sold only between 2-8mio before BotW. I really grant the Zelda-series those sales, it's my favorite
Is it me or has Mario Maker 2 somewhat underperformed? They should've really pushed the single player mode more in promotion (maybe even named it Mario Maker 2 + Single Player Game Name) because it's significantly more creative and charming than New Super Mario Bros U.
Best-selling Nintendo games of all time:
1) Wii Sports [Wii]: 82.90 million
2) Super Mario Bros [NES] : 40.24 million
3) Mario Kart Wii [Wii]: 37.38 million
4) Mario Kart 8 DX [NSW]: 33.41 million
5) Wii Sports Resort [Wii]: 33.13 million
6) Animal Crossing New Horizons [NSW]: 31.45 million
7) Pokemon Red/Blue/Green [GB]: 31.38 million
8) New Super Mario Bros [NDS]: 30.80 million
9) New Super Mario Bros Wii [Wii]: 30.30 million
10) Tetris [GB]: 30.26 million
Mario Kart 8 DX and Animal Crossing New Horizons should end up selling 45-50 million copies lifetime, becoming the 2nd and 3rd best-selling Nintendo games ever.
The only question is whether Animal Crossing can outsell Mario Kart.
@Clyde_Radcliffe Agreed, MM2 is in my top 3 platformers, it is a great game that more people should play.
These numbers are phenomenal! I can't imagine five years ago believing that we would be here now. Go Nintendo go!
Not too shabby for the worst game in the series, that's missing tonnes of content.
Well done to Animal crossing new horizons, a truly great game and a crow jewel in the Nintendo Switch lineup, how many copies this game can sell boggles the mind.
Excellent numbers. Mario Kart is a beast. And Animal Crossing is an abomination hehehe. Crazy how it's selling so well!
@westman98,
It's a tough one as it seems every person that buys a Nintendo Switch also buys Mario Kart 8 and Animal crossing new horizons, so I see them both remaining in their current positions, unless of course Nintendo release Mario Kart 9.
Annual Mario Kart 8 DX sales by calendar year:
> 2017: 7.33 million
> 2018: 7.69 million
> 2019: 7.94 million
> 2020: 10.45 million
> 2021: ???
To put things into perspective, Mario Kart 8 DX has sold more in 2020 than what most other Mario Kart titles have sold lifetime.
It's pretty clear that Mario Kart 8 DX correlate strongly with Switch hardware sales, so if Switch sales in 2021 are even remotely comparable to its sales in 2020, expect Mario Kart 8 DX to sell another 9-10 million copies this year.
Going to be interesting to see if Animal Crossing can compete with that.
@westman98
The numbers that Nintendo are pulling this generation are almost absurd. ^^
@Clyde_Radcliffe
Nintendo should create Super Mario 3D Maker, with features somewhat like LABO 04 with basic template like 3D World.
Or Nintendo can create 3D Platformer maker without Mario stuffs on it, just be Neutral so players can customize their characters and jumping around on the 3D world that they have created.
If you see Dragon Quest Builders 2 gameplay, you can literally make your own 3D Platformer game by using the switch buttons, blocks and some 3D objects.
Anyone know what the 3rd party million-sellers were?
Nintendo are doomed
1-2-Switch could have been in 2nd place if they bundled it with the Switch. I can see why they didn't bundle it now. It would sully their reputation. It hasn't got the legs of Wii Sports.
@C-Olimar I was wondering that too. Mario + Rabbids will definitely be there (although its now published by Nintendo in Japan I believe) as will Minecraft
Among Us was over 3m sold I understand.
Xenoblade Chronicles will be there too. As will the train game (Momotaro Dentetsu) that has been selling well in Japan.
That leaves 4 more games so probably some of the older games still selling well (maybe via sales) such as XC2, Astral Chain, Octopath, MUA3
Animal Crossing looking set to overtake Mario Kart is truly astonishing considering it's never really been treated as a a AAA franchise until recent years.
Pleased with those Pikmin 3 figures as well.
It's a little too early for me to talk about Age of Calamity, but 18 million players who have played Breath of the Wild are clearly missing out.
@BongoBongo Imagine Hades must have sold over 1m this year given its acclaim
After selling 31 million copies of ACNH in less than a year, Nintendo better support that game with new DLC after its Anniversary. I want to see new events, furniture, and tweaked holidays so they aren’t fully the same as before.
@Clyde_Radcliffe I think they should have made Mario Maker 2 available on PC, too with crossplay, since that type of game is really suited to the world of PC. But Nintendo would never do that.
@C-Olimar
"Anyone know what the 3rd party million-sellers were?"
The Sims
@Clyde_Radcliffe Super Mario Bros U is just such an easily recognizable title for all the grandmas of the world walking through Wal Mart to grab
New Horizons should have the asterisk for COVID, like the lakers chip in the bubble
(joking)
So Hyrule Warriors almost hit 3 mil without Japan's sales. Are we looking at over 4 mil for a musou?
I'm pretty certain Animal Crossing will overtake Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in Switch sales by next quarter. Though the latter is putting up a heck of a fight! Both usually chart well.
New Horizons is now the 15th most sold game ever just FYI
@Clyde_Radcliffe MM2 has more legs than I expected. It could sell 8.5M or even 9M, that's not bad. But yeah, way more people should play it. With it's quality it should have been a 20M seller.
@mariomaster96 Zelda is also a Wii U port
I'm kinda shocked that Arms didn't make it to 1 mil sales
@LXP8 Yeah but it released at the same day as the Wii U version unlike other Wii U ports
@mariomaster96 Yeah, it's just it was ported so late in development that it really shoulf be considered a Wii U game first and foremost. I think we should expect a graphical upgrade with botw 2 considering the hardware and years since it's launch, don't you agree?
@BongoBongo
Crash N Sane Trilogy is also a high seller in the US and UK for Switch, so I'm sure that it's hit the million + mark.
For anybody else who had a hard time wrapping their head around this: (took me a good 30 seconds)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons 19,410,000 (31,180,000)
ACNH sold 12 million in it's first 12 days back in March 20-31.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/animal_crossing_new_horizons_sold_11_77_million_copies_in_just_12_days
This ones for you @MoonKnight7 😉
@BongoBongo, Xenoblade wouldn't appear in a list of best selling 3rd party titles as it's 1st party.
In fact XC:DE is in the 1st party list in the article, just below Pikmin 3.
@rjejr
Haha, hopefully most people now agree that Animal Crossing is a major franchise, and has been for some time. I remember arguing with people about this a few years ago. I knew the franchise was just gonna get bigger.
I’m sure there’s still some who will fight me on it, cause that’s nintendoLife for ya, lol.
@MoonKnight7 "I’m sure there’s still some who will fight me on it, cause that’s nintendoLife for ya, lol."
The same people that would fight you that the Xenoblade Chronicle games aren't 1st party.
I mean, even I don't treat them that way, not expecting a XC section in any of the "Nintendo World" amusement parks, but Monolith is part of Nintendo, that's just a fact. 🤷♂️
@rjejr
Yep, yep for sure.
Also a XC amusement park sounds amazing, I wish that was real. “Riki’s Frontier Village” sounds like a place where I’d spend way too much money!
@MoonKnight7 I could get behind a Nopon village shopping area where we could eat red pollen orb cotton candy. 😂
Did you play Future Connected? We call that "XC: A Nopon Adventure" in our house. Shulk and Melia didn't really need to be there. Nopon in XCX was a bit tacked on, can't win them all.
Nopon > Rabbids 😉
@rjejr
No I haven’t yet, but I do want to get to it soon. How was it? Like most of us, I have so many games in my backlog. I played Xenoblade on 3DS, and while I appreciated the effort, it just didn’t look so good on there. So I’m really looking forward to playing with the sharper graphics.
Haha Nopon are definitely better than Rabbids. There’s just something about Rabbids that I just don’t trust when they’re using their weapons haha.
@MoonKnight7 XC, long story. XC is kind of our family game. I played the original about 6 years ago, my wife and kids watched. Then my sons watched Chuggaconroy - Youtuber - play the entire game. Then my son got a Switch as a high school graduation gift last summer and got the game as a birthday gift in September. Then he played the main game while at college, then played the DLC over the holidays and we all watched.
Somewhere in between there I played XCX and everyone watched, and about 2 years ago we watched my son play XC2 and that DLC Torna.
So if you've only played XC on the 3DS, graphics are certainly nicer on a big screen TV. Not sure how much better they would look on a 6" handheld.
The extra story, which my son pretty much 100%, only lasted about 12 hours, so I wouldn't 'spend $60 just for that. It was a fun diversion. But that's about it.
@rjejr
Gotcha, good to know thanks. I actually have the switch copy, cause my wife is a huge fan, so I wanna play it soon. I figured the dlc was just extra fluff, but 12 hours isn’t bad, I’ll take it.
@MoonKnight7 The DLC was certainly fun and enjoyable, even just watching, I still just can't figure out what the point was? I blame my sons, they told me some things. 😉
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