Animal Crossing 3DS Sales Due to Increase in Female Players & Social Activity

By Jorge Ba-oh 06.01.2013 4

Animal Crossing 3DS Sales Due to Increase in Female Players & Social Activity on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

Speaking to Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata discussed  the exceptional performance of Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Jump Out) in the country so far.

New Leaf was the first Nintendo 3DS game to sell over 2 million copies in Japan, with approximately 1 in every 110 people now owning a copy. In it's short space on the market, the latest Animal Crossing has already trumped other popular titles Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and Monster Hunter 3G.

A growing chunk of these numbers, both software and hardware, are down to an increase in female owners - with the highest percentage in the first three weeks of sales being 19 to 24 year old women, "an age range found typically in fewer numbers for Nintendo".

As a system in itself, the Nintendo 3DS is normally 69% male to 31% female, but during the initial sales of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, it shifted to 56% female and 44% male.

These are the sort of numbers that leave me dumbfounded. I've never seen anything like it; a game that sells like this on a Nintendo hardware.

In the Nikkei report, Iwata also confirmed that around a quarter of these - 500,000 - were sold through the Nintendo eShop at the full retail/download price of 4800 Yen.

Alongside the increase in female audience, Iwata attributes sales to Nintendo Direct broadcasts on video sites - over 1.6 million hits on an Animal Crossing introduction on YouTube, with more than half of these coming from a mobile/tablet device.

For a 47 minute video with developers talking casually about a game to have 1.6 million views is almost impossible, like really something unusual, I think

The screenshot function, which players are sharing on social networks, has also helped spread New Leaf awareness at a more organic level so friends would develop "their own interest and trying it out for themselves".


 

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is due for release in North America and Europe later this year.

Box art for Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Also known as

Tobidase Doubutsu no Mori

Developer

Nintendo

Publisher

Nintendo

Genre

Simulation

Players

4

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  10/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  9/10 (46 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now    Also on Also on Nintendo eShop

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Comments

This will be my first retail download.

Will probably skip this due to how much of a time drain it can be. Smilie

I'd love to see how a potential WiiU version would make use of Miiverse though...Smilie

Animal Crossing will work wonders in the West too, I hope Nintendo hype it up enough because I just know that there are absolutely tons of people of both sexes who will buy a 3DS just for this game.

I'm also really excited for it Smilie It's been so long since I played AC due to the Wii version being such a lazy effort.

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery
Bekzy (guest) 10.02.2013#4

Please check out my website, http://bekzyanimalcrossing3ds.weebly.com/  I know lots of information about the game but I need people to ask me questions to answer as I don't know what people want to know. Please check it out then contact me!

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