In Japan, Animal Crossing: New Horizons Is the Biggest New Game for the Switch

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been nothing short of a smash hit success for Nintendo. In just three days on sale, the debut Animal Crossing game on the Nintendo Switch has had the biggest launch ever for a single game on the handheld console in the region.

Famitsu reports that in Japan, Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold a grand total of 1.8 million copies in the three days that it was on sale for last week. This runs from Friday through to Sunday, which is when you'd naturally expect the vast majority of consumers to pick up a copy of the new game.

It pretty comfortably beat the previous record holder: Pokemon Sword and Shield. The two games shipped a combined total of 1.36 million copies in their first three days of sale, but that's combining both the two games together. It would be an even bigger margin of victory for New Horizons if you counted the sales of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield separately.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Animal Crossing easily topped the UK sales charts. New Horizons' launch had over 3.5 times that of the last main Animal Crossing game: New Leaf on the 3DS.

Note that all these figures are only counting the physical sales of New Horizons. If you were to somehow acquire the data for the digital sales of Animal Crossing (which Nintendo never publicizes), it's relatively easy to imagine how many more copies of the game have been installed in Japan.