Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete surpasses $3m with highest daily spend since 2017

• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete earned $505,000 on December 8th, 2024
• This outperformed the original Pocket Camp's daily earnings dating back to December 3rd, 2017

Nintendo’s latest mobile game Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete has generated $3.1 million in gross revenue in just over a week by AppMagic estimates, as players spend to preserve their save files from a now-shuttered title.

After more than seven years, the original free-to-play Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp reached its end of service on November 28th, 2024, but rather than completely stripping it away from fans, Nintendo has repurposed the game’s assets into a premium, offline version called Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.

The premium edition released on December 2nd as the only way to continue playing what is largely the same game, though set to recycle old events rather than roll out continued updates.

Still, this marks a win for game preservation as fans can maintain access to in-game content, their save files, campsites, collected materials and more, replaying the carousel of past seasonal updates for as long as they choose.

This shift from a free-to-play live service game to a definitive, premium package with no future development costs appears to have paid off for Nintendo so far, as estimates put Complete’s current daily revenue at levels unseen in the original Pocket Camp since 2017.

Pocketing the cash

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete generated $2.6 million in one-time premium purchases over its first week and since surpassed $3 million on December 9th. This means that it’s currently averaging $385,000 in gross player spending per day.

A peak of $505,000 on December 8th, 2024 marked Pocket Camp Complete’s most lucrative day to date and also outearned any single day in the free-to-play Pocket Camp since December 3rd, 2017. This date seven years ago marked the last time Pocket Camp surpassed $500,000 in daily spend, with $535,000 in gross earnings.

Pocket Camp Complete’s $2.6 million launch week was also more lucrative than any seven-day period in the original since December 2017, though failed to reach the free-to-play game’s early peak of $5.6 million the week commencing November 20th, 2017.

Still, the decision to repurpose Pocket Camp as a finished product appears to be paying off - no longer monetised by microtransactions and subscriptions, but bought in full for $9.99. Nintendo has also encouraged players to make the purchase quickly, warning of a price increase to $19.99 on January 31st, 2025.

This means that fans have no alternative to continue playing but to pay, and will have to pay even more if they don’t do so soon. These factors likely explain much of Pocket Camp Complete’s initial surge, although daily spending is likely to drop once the majority of interested, long-time players have made the move.

Furthermore, data transfers to Pocket Camp Complete will end on June 2nd, 2025, meaning those who wait beyond the six-month window will have to start a fresh save file if they do decide to buy later.

The original Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp generated $381.1 million over its lifetime, just shy of Nintendo’s second-biggest mobile game Mario Kart Tour, another 'finished' game at $387.9 million.

Fire Emblem Heroes remains safely in the lead as the only Nintendo mobile title to surpass $1 billion.