Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime
With more and more people being told to stay at home because of coronavirus, there has been an increase in the number of people playing video games. In South Korea, this trend has been taken to the next level.
Games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons were released during the pandemic, leaving many people wanting to play. With this increase in the number of people playing video games, however, there have been shortages of fan-favorite consoles such as the Nintendo Switch.
Just last weekend, around 1,000 people lined up in Suwon to be entered into a lottery to have a chance of getting a Nintendo Switch. The caveat was that there were only 300 lottery tickets and 45 Nintendo Switches. This meant that of the thousand people who lined up, fans had a 4.5% chance of getting their hands on a Switch.
Five-hundred people gathered for their chance to get a switch in Daegu.
South Korea has been one of the better countries in minimizing the spread of coronavirus, especially given their close proximity to the virus’ origin in China, with only 255 deaths from the virus to date.
These mass gatherings of people to get their hands on video game consoles, whether it be the Switch or otherwise, does raise the question of what should the South Korean government, and companies like Nintendo do to mitigate the risks of having all of these people gathering together.
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