Daewon Media, which retails more than half of all Nintendo Switch game consoles here, said Friday that sales of the Japanese game consoles spiked 30 percent in the first quarter, thanks to the nationwide popularity of the hit game Animal Crossing: New Horizons amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The South Korean game distributor said it sold 82,848 Nintendo Switch consoles in the first quarter, a 30.4 percent increase on-year, and 287,590 Nintendo Switch games in the same period, a 57.4 percent surge on-year.

“The sales boost was propelled by passionate users who competed to purchase Nintendo Switch consoles, which suffered an acute supply shortage following the production setback in China due to the COVID-19 outbreak,” a Daewon Media official said, adding that Animal Crossing had led more women and children to start using the consoles.

On March 20, the Animal Crossing release date, more than 2,000 people lined up at Daewon Media’s offline store in Yongsan-gu, central Seoul, to purchase the Nintendo Switch.

The latest version of the 20-year-old game allows people to live on an island where they are free to collect and build things. Players can go fishing, digging or bug-catching and can communicate with their animal neighbors. Because the game reflects real-life seasons and times of day, players can log in and enjoy the view as well as a sense of security and peace, despite the COVID-19 outbreak.

According to 3D platform development company Unity, the number of PC and console game users increased 46 percent on-year in the January-March period.

By Kim Byung-wook (kbw@heraldcorp.com)