The busiest months in the gaming calendar come at the end of the year, as the bulk of sales happen during the holiday season. It seems that no one told this to 2020, as next March has a jacked roster of first-party releases, and a new one has just been added to it in the form of Doom Eternal, which has been delayed from its November 2019 release.
Doom Eternal is now being released on March 20th, which means that it's being released on the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was also delayed from its 2019 release and pushed back to March 2020. This means that the Doom Slayer and Tom Nook will be competing for the cash in gamer's wallets all around the world, as people will find themselves choosing between Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal.
It would be difficult to find two series that are more different than Animal Crossing and Doom. Animal Crossing is a slow-paced game about tending to a twee village that is filled with cute animal people, while Doom stars a murderous space marine who enjoys ripping and tearing the guts of his enemies, as he faces off against the hordes of Hell itself. Animal Crossing and Doom are both very popular and have passionate fanbases 0f their own, which means that the people who love both series will have a hard choice to make next March.
It's notable that the Nintendo Switch port of Doom Eternal no longer has a set release date, which some people have already attributed to issues with porting the game to the system with the weaker hardware, as was the case with Dark Souls: Remastered. It's entirely possible that the Nintendo Switch port of Doom Eternal was pushed back specifically to avoid it going head-to-head with Animal Crossing: New Horizons and potentially diluting its sales on that system.
There is also the bigger issue of March 2020 being stacked with releases, as it's the same month that Final Fantasy VII Remake, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, and Watch Dogs: Legion are due to be released. There are also rumors that Persona 5 Royal is being released in March, but these have yet to be verified. February 2020 is also seeing the release of The Last of Us Part II and April has Cyberpunk 2077, both of which are highly anticipated games and could compete for sales with Doom. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is safer than Doom Eternal in this regard, as there are few Nintendo Switch titles that have been announced for the first half of 2020 and it seems as if it won't have much competition on its home turf, whereas Doom Eternal is being released on systems that will be swamped with high-quality releases.
A highly competitive release date can hinder a game's chance of being noticed at the marketplace, as was the case with Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age and Shadow of the Tomb Raider being released so close to Marvel's Spider-Man, or the Nintendo Switch port of Katamari Damacy Reroll being released on the same day as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It's possible that Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal are so different that they won't affect each other's sales, but we won't know for sure until next year.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is being released for the Nintendo Switch on March 20, 2020. Doom Eternal is being released for Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on March 20, 2020, with a Nintendo Switch release due to be released at a later date.