Animal Crossing: New Horizons officially has the best early sales of any Switch game

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Switch Lite is selling well, too

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold almost 12 million copies in its first 11 days on sale, Nintendo has revealed.

Nintendo's recent financial statement for its 2020 fiscal year (which, due to business things, ended on March 31) revealed the staggering sales figures for the latest game about chilling with your animal friends. Eleven days sounds like an arbitrary period of time to measure game sales, though in this case that's how long New Horizons was out in Nintendo's fiscal year. If you extend that timetable past March 31 to New Horizon's first six weeks on sale, the total figures reach 13.41 million.

Nintendo says Animal Crossing: New Horizons now officially has the "best start" of any Nintendo Switch game. That's particularly impressive since Switch has already hosted major game launches for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Pokemon Sword and Shield, and other franchises that have traditionally been much bigger for Nintendo than Animal Crossing.

I never could have seen this coming back when I was playing Animal Crossing on GameCube. Still, I'm delighted that more and more people are discovering the joy of stuffing their houses with mismatched furniture and so, so many turnips.

In the same financial statement, Nintendo revealed that it has sold 6.19 million Switch Lite consoles since the system launched last year. Still more standard Switch systems (14.83 million) were sold, though Switch Lite was only launched in September - it will be interesting to see how the sales of Lite, a dedicated handheld, compare to its home/portable hybrid sibling once they both have a full year's worth of data.

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.