Animal Crossing: New Horizons Tops 50 Million Units in Nintendo’s Q1 FY27 Report
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has officially crossed the 50-million-unit mark, according to Nintendo’s financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year ending March 2027. The 2020 life-sim hit stood at 50.29 million lifetime units as of June 30, 2026, per figures Nintendo disclosed in its quarterly earnings and detailed by GoNintendo, up from 49.91 million at the close of the previous fiscal year.
That works out to roughly 380,000 additional copies sold in the April-to-June quarter alone, a remarkable trickle of sales for a six-year-old title that never left Nintendo’s Switch storefront. The milestone was confirmed alongside a broader earnings beat: Nintendo reported revenue of 517.8 billion Japanese yen ($3.28 billion) versus 444.96 billion yen expected, with net profit of 147.4 billion yen versus 78.30 billion yen expected, according to CNBC’s coverage of the results.
How Animal Crossing: New Horizons Reached 50.29 Million Units
Nintendo’s own investor relations database had already shown the game inching toward the milestone. As of March 31, 2026, the company’s official sales-tracking page listed Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 49.91 million units, trailing only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s 71.08 million on the all-time Switch software chart. Nintendo Life had flagged the approaching threshold back in May, noting the community’s anticipation as the title neared “the big 50 mil.”
The jump to 50.29 million confirmed in the new Q1 FY27 filing means New Horizons has now cleared that long-awaited line, cementing its status as one of only a handful of Nintendo Switch games to ever reach the figure. Per GoNintendo’s breakdown of Nintendo’s own disclosures, the wider Switch top 10 as of June 30, 2026 also included Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at 38.14 million units, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at 34.06 million units, and Super Mario Odyssey at 30.80 million units.
Switch 2 Keeps Growing While the Original Switch Slows
Animal Crossing’s continued sales came in a quarter defined by the ongoing handover to Nintendo Switch 2. GoNintendo’s report on the same earnings disclosure noted that Switch 2 hardware sales totaled 3.82 million units in Q1, Switch 2 software sales totaled 9.46 million units, up 9.2% compared to last year, Switch hardware sales totaled 660k units in Q1, down 31.8% compared to last year, and Switch software sales totaled 33.81 million units, up 38.6% compared to last year.
That last figure is notable: even as original Switch hardware sales fade, software sales for the seven-year-old console actually accelerated, a trend the surging Animal Crossing tally fits neatly into. RTÉ’s report on the same results noted that Nintendo’s operating profit soared 150.5% to 142.6 billion yen, helped by brisk demand for Switch 2 software and refunds of US tariffs.
Second Only to Mario Kart on the All-Time Switch Chart
Animal Crossing: New Horizons remains firmly locked in as the Switch’s second-best-selling game of all time, a position it has held since overtaking Super Smash Bros. Ultimate years ago. Nintendo’s own top-selling title data, refreshed quarterly on its investor relations site, continues to track the game alongside evergreen hits like Pokémon Scarlet/Pokémon Violet and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, both of which sit well behind it on the leaderboard.
What makes the 50-million milestone particularly striking is the game’s age. Released worldwide in March 2020, New Horizons became an early pandemic-era phenomenon and has simply never stopped selling since, buoyed periodically by free content updates that have kept the island simulator relevant deep into the Switch 2 era.
What It Means for Nintendo’s Software Strategy
For Nintendo, the milestone underscores a strategy that has leaned heavily on evergreen back-catalogue titles to cushion the transition to Switch 2 hardware. With Switch 2 lifetime hardware shipments reaching 23.68 million units and software climbing to 58.17 million units by the end of Q1 FY27, according to Nintendo’s disclosures, the company is still selling plenty of original Switch software to a massive existing install base of 156.59 million consoles.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ steady, unglamorous quarter-by-quarter sales growth — no blockbuster marketing push, no new content drop tied to this particular reporting period — is exactly the kind of long-tail performance publishers dream about. For Australian and New Zealand players who picked up the game during the original 2020 lockdown boom, the news is a reminder that Nintendo’s island getaway is still very much a going concern six-plus years on, even as attention shifts toward what a Switch 2-native successor might eventually look like.
Read also: Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Hits 7.94M Units in Nintendo’s Q1 FY27 Report
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