How many people play Animal Crossing? — 2024 statistics

Animal Crossing sales reached over 77.1 million units across the entire series.

(Source: VG Chartz)

• The original Animal Crossing sold 2.27 million units.
• Animal Crossing: Wild World sold 11.75 million units.
• Animal Crossing: City Folk sold 4.32 million units.
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf sold 13.04 million units.
• Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer sold 3.51 million units.
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold 42.21 million units.

When you look at the heading for this line of stats, you might stop and think to yourself: “Wait, a game about little animals sold more than the God of War series?” if so, the answer is a resounding yes across the board. This series has achieved global popularity and has established itself as one of the best series that Nintendo has produced, and New Horizons is the game to get if you’re a Nintendo Switch gamer.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the best-selling game in the series.

(Source: Statista)

• The game sold 3.32 million units in Japan during its first three weeks.
• 5 million hard copies were sold in Japan in the first three months.
• It sold 5 million digital units in its first month.
• It sold 11.77 million units in its first 11 days.
• The game sold 13.41 million units in its first six weeks.
• After its first 4 months, the game had sold 22.4 million units.
• By June 2022, the game had sold 42.21 million units.

It is no secret that New Horizons is the most popular Animal Crossing release, and there is no better way to gauge how well it has performed than to look at some periodical sales milestones that it achieved in various regions, specifically Japan, where sales tend to be much lower than in the West.

39.48% of Animal Crossing players are from the United States.

(Source: PlayerCounter)

• 5.49% of players are from Canada.
• 5.41% of players are from the United Kingdom.
• 3.83% of players are from France.
• 2.17% of players are from Australia.

This is just a broad estimate of the number of Animal Crossing players in some of the most prominent countries, and we can see that the United States is first here, as the game is the most popular in the West and Americans tend to flock to games like this like birds. Other than that, you can assume that a lot of players are in Japan, as well.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has generated over $250 million in lifetime player spending.

(Source: SensorTower)

• Pocket Camp is Nintendo’s second-best game when it comes to in-game spending, with Fire Emblem Heroes coming in first at $929.6 million.
• Mario Kart Tour comes in at third place with $243.7 million in lifetime player spending.
• $172 million of the total money spent was spent in Japan, which equates to 67.3% of the revenue.
• 21% of player spending is in the United States, while 1.8% of player spending is in South Korea.
• 61% of player spending on Pocket Camp belongs to the App Store, while 39% belongs to Google Play.
• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has been installed 61.8 million times to date.
• 20.4 million of those installs were in the United States, or 33%.
• Japan has 7.8% of the installs.
• France has 6.3% of the installs.

We all know that mobile game microtransactions generate enough money to rival a small country’s GDP, but damn, is Nintendo raking it in or what? Nearly $1 billion from the microtransactions of a single game is crazy, and that’s not even mentioning their other games like Mario Kart and such.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is Japan’s best-selling game of all time.

(Source: NintendoLife)

• The game sold over 10 million copies in Japan.
• The previous best-selling game was Super Mario Bros. on the NES.
• The current competitor for New Horizons are Pokemon Red, Green, and Blue, but they do not count as they are considered to be separate games.
• If they did count, however, they would total 10.23 million sales.

This is another place where Animal Crossing: New Horizons shines. Japan is notorious for not that many games selling too well in general, so the classics are what have stood the test of time and remained relevant all of these years despite the emergence of new games and new hardware… until New Horizons showed up.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons had 82.9 million hours watched on Twitch in 2020.

(Source: SullyGnome)

• The game had 2.1 million broadcasting hours.
• There were 9,439 viewers watching the game on average.
• There were 239 channels watching the game on average.
• It had a viewer ratio of 39.4.
• Its max viewer count was 244,171.
• There were 95,325 broadcasters that streamed the game.

It is important to understand a game’s appeal from the other side of the screen, as well, and the truth that we can see here is that Animal Crossing is widely appealing for people to watch instead of play because the game itself is quite wholesome and charming in its own respect, and there are few things better than relaxing after an annoying day and getting to watch a chill streamer tend to their little island homestead.

To sum up

There is no denying it. Animal Crossing is going to go into the hall of fame as one of the best series to ever come out, as it has everything you could want in a life simulation game. The reasons Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are so popular are that they appeal to the same demographics and species of gamers, and they have all of the same qualities that are hard to replicate and present as well as they did. Through the information presented here, we have seen that the game has extremely good sales, reception, and its player base is not decreasing in the slightest, and we can’t wait to see what Nintendo has next in store for this fantastic series!