Nintendo Selects - Animal Crossing: City Folk Data Report

Pictured from left to right:  K.K. Slider, Brewster, and Tom Nook

Coffee Beans:
Animal Crossing: City Folk (AC:CF) was originally released for the Wii on November 16, 2008.  The game released with two versions: the software only version with a MSRP of $49.99, and a Wii Speak bundle for $69.99 which included the Wii Speak unit and game.

AC:CF was developed by Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis and Development studio, and it followed very closely game-play wise in the footsteps of the Animal Crossing games released before it on the GameCube and Nintendo DS.

The game received an "Everyone" rating from the ESRB with "Comic Mischief" listed as the only content for gamers/parents to be aware of.

On Sunday May 15, 2011, Animal Crossing: City Folk joined three other Wii games in America as a Nintendo Selects title, which means it now has a MSRP of just $19.99.

How many hours have Wii owners reported spending in Animal Crossing: City Folk (probably being ripped off by Tom Nook and his outrageous prices), with 919 days of game-play reported?  Let's take a look!

Hours shown are for United States of America Wii owners that report
game-play data via the Nintendo Channel, and is not reflective of all Wii owners.

Approx. Number of Players Having Reported Data:
Animal Crossing: City Folk has 372,876 Wii owners that have reported game-play hours through the Wii's Nintendo Channel.

Reporting Player Increase:
How many more players has Animal Crossing: City Folk seen increased in having reported data since my last report?
The game has had about 71,606 more players report data since the last report on August 1, 2010.

Average & Total Game-Play Hours:
AC:CF has 29,167,464 Total Hours of game-play reported, an increase of 7,324,261 Total Hours since the last report. The game's average play-time is now 78 Hours 13 Minutes "Per person" having reported data, which is 5 Hours 42 Minutes higher than the average recorded on July 26, 2010.

Animal Crossing: City Folk's average play-time per session is now right at 2 Hours.

Sales Ranks & Advertised Prices:
Animal Crossing: City Folk's Amazon.com sale rank is currently #319, and it is listed for $16.96.
Nintendo Selects: Animal Crossing: City Folk's Amazon.com sale rank is #2,143, and it is listed for $19.99.

Sales ranks and prices recorded around 11:30PM on May 24, 2011.

Review Score Averages:
AC:CF's "professional" review score average is 73.48%, based on 46 reviews on GameRankings.com.

The game has about a 4 out of 5 Stars rating on Amazon.com, based on 257 customer reviews across all versions of the game.
Animal Crossing: City Folk's customer review score average is 82.56%, when the customer reviews are converted to a 100% review scale.

Review score averages recorded around 11:30PM on May 24, 2011.

Filtered Thoughts:
I think the reported game-play hours for AC:CF should be encouraging to Nintendo, and I am interested to see if the game being a Nintendo Selects title will cause any significant increase in the number of players reporting data over the next few months.

The near thirty million "Total Hours" of game-play reported would be equivalent to more than 3,000 years of game-play, and seeing the game increase by more than seven million game-play hours in less than a year is pretty significant for a title this old, I believe.

Also, many may not know this, but Animal Crossing: City Folk's reported hours of 78 Hours 13 Minutes "Per person", I believe makes it the third most-played Wii game in that category.

The Amazon.com sales ranks actually surprised me a bit, as I was expecting the newer Nintendo Selects AC:CF version to be ranked higher than the older version, but Amazon.com is selling the older version for $16.96 with "Free Standard Shipping", and the Nintendo Selects title for $19.99 + Shipping, so it makes sense for the older one to have the higher sales rank.

The review score averages for AC:CF are interesting, as I have read how AC:CF did not change much from the older games, and even seems to have more issues(such as no regenerating grass?!  FIX THAT NINTENDO!).  I think the review score average difference makes sense because I would imagine more "professional" reviewers played the older versions in the Animal Crossing series, and perhaps many Wii owners that reviewed AC:CF never played the other versions so they were not judging AC:CF off of the other titles.

Caffeinated Thoughts:
I purchased the Animal Crossing: City Folk Wii Speak bundle from Amazon.com on March 31, 2009, and the game arrived a few days later.  The reason I purchased it was because the AC:CF Wii Speak bundle was on sale for $49.98, and I wanted a Wii Speak unit for The Conduit when it released.  At the time, I figured I could make a few dollars back by trading-in AC:CF if I did not like it, and just keep the Wii Speak unit instead.

Well, little did I know that my wife and I would both play Animal Crossing: City Folk, and soon her and I were competing for play-time with the game.  Tom Nook quickly became a rich man(or raccoon dog!) off of us, and I viewed him as a crook!

Here we are 2+ years later, and AC:CF is still in our Wii collection.  How many hours have we reported playing Animal Crossing: City Folk as shown on the Nintendo Channel?  Take a look!

Animal Crossing: City Folk is our most-played Wii game to date, and I had no idea when I purchased AC:CF that it would become our most-played Wii game!

While I stopped playing AC:CF after about 5 months, Mrs. Coffee kept at it and still plays the game on probably a weekly basis.  The majority of the hours shown above are from her playing the game.  I definitely think she is a "hardcore" AC:CF player, as she has printed off a list of K.K. Slider songs to get, and she has three legal pad pages of notes about stuff in the game!

If you have not seen anything on Animal Crossing: City Folk, the trailer below may give you an idea about the game:


AC:CF's game-play is very simple and easy to learn, but its formula makes for a strangely addicting game.  I know many guys wonder what video games they could purchase to try and get a girlfriend/wife interested in playing games, and I would suggest Animal Crossing: City Folk as one game to try, especially now with its lower MSRP of just $19.99.

If any of you are playing AC:CF regularly or perhaps looking at purchasing it, and you are looking for other people with the game, feel free to add my friend code for the game.  My Animal Crossing: City Folk friend code is: 0001-9597-5664.

Also, feel free to leave your AC:CF friend code in the comments section below, or by sending me an email with it.

Questions:
Have any of been playing Animal Crossing: City Folk on a regular basis like my wife?  If not AC:CF, what about the other Animal Crossing games on the GameCube and DS?

Also, do you feel Tom Nook is a crook, or just a savvy business man?

If any of you are interested in Animal Crossing: City Folk, you can see links on Amazon.com to all three versions below.  Currently, the cheapest version is the original software release, which includes free shipping with its listed price: