Looking back at the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you would think that the stars had aligned. The game was already massively hyped up, with everyone from kids to grown adults like myself, ready to get back into Tom Nook’s latest entrepreneurial adventure. Pair that up with an incoming pandemic resulting in stay-at-home orders and you have the perfect recipe for a great launch. This ended up being reflected by the game’s sales, which show New Horizons topping off game sales for March despite launching near the end of the month.
According to The NPD Group, a market research group, New Horizons stole the number one spot from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Sales for the year, however, still go to Call of Duty, although New Horizons is now in the number two spot on that list. This data still leaves the latest Animal Crossing title as not only the best-selling in franchise history but the third best launch of a Nintendo game in America, only behind Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Ultimate.
US NPD SW – Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the best-selling game of March 2020, despite the lack of digital tracking for Nintendo published software. Animal Crossing: New Horizons instantly becomes the 2nd best-selling game of 2020. pic.twitter.com/nxKtKKX78e
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 21, 2020
The report also notes that hardware spending in the U.S has skyrocketed, if you couldn’t tell by the news of sold-out Switch consoles. Across the board, people are spending more on every single piece of hardware.
Detailed on Twitter by Mat Piscatella, a researcher at The NPD Group, hardware spending grew 63 percent compared to March 2019. Sales for the Switch last month doubled compared to its March 2019 sales, while PS4 and Xbox One both had 25 percent gains. The Switch also set a new record for most units sold in March, topping a previously set record from the console’s launch in March of 2017.
I know that’s a lot of information to digest so here’s the point, boiled down: Animal Crossing is selling like crazy, and everyone and their grandma are buying consoles. It’s some good news, considering that we’ve been talking a lot about the events the coronavirus has canceled. I’m just happy to see everyone taking the advice of the WHO: stay inside and play some games.
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