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SuperData: Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 5 Million First-Month Digital Sales Most in Console History

animal crossing, new horizons, digital spending, superdata

SuperData’s monthly report on worldwide digital video game spending is in for March, which turned out to be a record-breaker for a number of AAA franchises. Most notably, Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold five million digital copies in a single month, the most for a console game ever — a record previously held by Call of Duty: Black Ops III.

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To put the numbers into perspective, five million digital copies “roughly matches” the first-month digital sales of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokémon Sword and Shield put together.”

SuperData cites the game’s “combination of social features and a relaxing setting likely appealed to individuals stuck at home,” as a key factor driving its success. Further, “closures of brick and mortar stores also meant that a higher share of consumers purchased the game digitally compared to past Switch titles.”

New Horizons’ helped to spearhead a surge in digital spending across the entire industry, which reached a record $10 billion, the highest monthly total ever. Unsurprisingly, SuperData notes that “individuals are turning to games as a reliable entertainment option during the COVID-19 crisis and are using online multiplayer to keep in touch with others.”

Other top-performing video game titles include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare — specifically, its Warzone battle royale mode, which has been so popular that its monthly active user numbers have jumped 159% month-over-month to reach an all-time high of 62.7M.

Doom Eternal has smashed previous digital numbers for the franchise, too, with 3 million digital units in March — “more than three times what Doom sold (957K) during its launch in May 2016.”

Half-Life: Alyx, meanwhile, is described as having enjoyed only modest success by AAA standards but is a blockbuster compared to other VR games. “A total of 860K gamers played the PC VR title in March,” according to SuperData, while “direct purchases of Half-Life: Alyx generated $40.7M in revenue.”

In related news, The NPD Group’s monthly tracking of total video game spending in the US yesterday put Animal Crossing: New Horizons comfortably in the lead of software sales.

About the author

Alex Gibson

Alex was a Senior Editor at Twinfinite and worked on the site between January 2017 and March 2023. He covered the ins and outs of Valorant extensively, and frequently provided expert insight into the esports scene and wider video games industry. He was a self-proclaimed history & meteorological expert, and knew about games too. Playing Games Since: 1991, Favorite Genres: RPG, Action

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