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

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.