People line up to purchase Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a new game title for the Nintendo Switch, in front of a store in Seoul on April 23, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Sales of the Nintendo Switch jumped more than 30 percent on-year during the first quarter of this year in South Korea amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, industry data showed Friday.
A total of 82,848 units of the video game console made by Japanese gaming firm Nintendo Co. were sold during the January-March period, up 30.4 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the data by local distributor Daewon Media Co.
Sales of Nintendo Switch game titles also skyrocketed 57.4 percent on-year to 287,590 units during the cited period, the data showed.
An accumulated 505,718 units of the Nintendo Switch and 1.44 million game titles have been sold in South Korea since the global release in 2017, the data showed.
The increased sales of the console show that more people are turning to video games for entertainment as the COVID-19 pandemic has confined them to their homes.
Noticeably, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a new title released on March 20, has gained popularity, Daewon Media said. More than 2.6 million units of the game were sold globally.
Daily active users of PC and console games spiked 46 percent on-year during the January-May period, according to a separate report by game software developer Unity Technologies.
The corresponding number for mobile gaming was a 17 percent increase.
Before the COVID-19 outbreak hit, there was already a 13 percent on-year increase in mobile app downloads, but the corresponding number skyrocketed as countries entered lockdowns in early March, according to the report.
(Yonhap)
