Video game sales spiked last month as coronavirus forced millions of Americans indoors — and Nintendo was the big winner

• The Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console in March, the big winner in a month when video game hardware and software sales spiked across the board as millions were forced indoors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Sales of "video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards" topped $1.6 billion for March, according to The NPD Group's monthly report — "the highest reported spend for a March month since the $1.8 billion achieved in March 2008."
• Nintendo was the big winner: The Switch outsold the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and "Animal Crossing" topped the game sales charts.
• The Switch has been sold out everywhere for weeks, and resellers are charging double or more for the $300 console. Nintendo is increasing production to keep up with surging demand.
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Nintendo's Switch was already a major success before a worldwide pandemic forced people indoors, with over 50 million sold.

But as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the United States in March, and millions of Americans — including millions of parents with young children — increasingly spent much of their time inside, demand for the Switch sharply increased.

We've already seen some anecdotal evidence of that spike in demand, with every major retailer sold out of the console, but now we've got data: The console "set a new all-time record for hardware unit sales in a March month," in a month where hardware spending grew by 63 percent compared to the prior year to $461 million, according to The NPD Group's video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella.

The console outsold both Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, and Nintendo also had the highest-selling game of the month in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons."

"Animal Crossing: New Horizons" is only available on the Nintendo Switch, yet the game topped the sales charts in March, besting heavyweights like "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" that are available on multiple platforms.

It instantly became the best-selling "Animal Crossing" game in the game's 19-year franchise. Not only was "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" the best-selling game of March, it has also become the second-best-selling game of the year — behind only the aforementioned behemoth "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" — according to the report.

Nintendo's Switch console was already popular before the coronavirus pandemic, but Nintendo was handily keeping up with demand.

Up until March, you could walk into most of the retailers mentioned above and walk out with a Nintendo Switch. But as the coronavirus pandemic spread in the US, and retailers closed across the country starting in March, supplies of the Switch became just as scarce as toilet paper at the supermarket.

Though production has largely resumed, Nintendo is still playing catch up from the pause in production — thus, there are no consoles available to buy at the moment. Nintendo Switch supply issues are expected to be resolved by June.

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