Animal Crossing: New Horizons hits 50 million copies sold

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has crossed the 50 million sales mark, Nintendo confirmed in its latest earnings report. The game sat at 49.91 million units through March 31, 2026, then climbed to 50.29 million by June 30 — meaning roughly 380,000 copies moved in just the last 90 days.

That puts New Horizons at No. 2 on the all-time Switch 1 sales chart, behind only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at 78.53 million units. Zoom out further and it lands at No. 10 on the list of best-selling games in the entire history of gaming — a club with very few members. Both titles benefitted from hardware bundle inclusion, but the raw numbers are remarkable regardless. A Switch 2 edition launched in January 2026, with existing owners able to upgrade for $5, and the game also runs on Switch 2 via backwards compatibility.

New Horizons launched in March 2020, right as COVID-19 lockdowns swept the world. The timing was almost uncanny — a slow-paced, community-focused island life game arriving exactly when millions of people were stuck at home and desperate for something calming. It became a genuine cultural phenomenon, with players logging thousands of hours decorating islands and visiting friends online. The Animal Crossing series had always had a dedicated fanbase, but New Horizons turned it into one of Nintendo's biggest franchises outright.

With the Switch 2 upgrade path already in place and the game still selling hundreds of thousands of copies per quarter four-plus years after launch, New Horizons shows no signs of fading. Whether Nintendo has any new content planned for the Switch 2 version remains to be seen.