Animal Crossing: New Horizons releases and takes the top of UK charts

As self-isolation gets more and more prevalent, Animal Crossing: New Horizons becomes the best-selling game at retail in the UK.

Nintendo’s debut Animal Crossing game for the Nintendo Switch has sold more copies at launch than the combined launch sales of all previous games in the series, including spin-offs. The last game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, was the previous biggest launch for the series. It was released in 2013 for Nintendo 3DS, and the launch of this latest game is 3.5 times larger.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has also seen the biggest launch of a single game for the Nintendo Switch in history. However, if sales for Pokemon Sword and Shield were combined, they would have seen a larger first week.

To make things more impressive, this is all without digital sales data, which Nintendo doesn’t share. Given that the UK government is strongly encouraging citizens to stay indoors and self-isolate, the download figures could be even larger than the physical ones.

The second significant launch of last week was DOOM Eternal, which was released on the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s hardly surprising that Nintnedo’s game sold better, given how well-loved the Animal Crossing series is.

DOOM Eternal’s launch was about a third smaller than the previous game, DOOM 2016. Bethesda also does not provide digital sales data though, so there’s a good chance that the game performed far better on digital storefronts.

475,000 physical copies of games were sold in the last seven days, over three times more than the previous week’s numbers. This isn’t only down to the week’s new releases either. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare saw a week-on-week sales jump of 282 percent, though it did drop to third place in the chart.

FIFA 20 saw an increase in week-on-week sales of 326 percent, placing fourth in the chart, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe saw a rise of 100 percent in week-on-week sales. The only games in the top 40 to see an actual drop in sales were Nioh 2, Two Point Hospital, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX.

The increase in sales, according to retailers, is a boost caused by consumers preparing for the long months of self-isolation anticipated ahead.

A more extended list of top sellers can be found here.