Online sales of gaming consoles in the UK have soared during lockdown

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Staying safe in your own home is apparently the best time to be gaming, as console sales in the UK have reportedly soared during the government sanctioned lockdown of 2020.

According to a report from Console Deals, online sales of the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One have respectively doubled, tripled, and quadrupled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Compared to Console Deal’s data from 2019, there’s been a very noticeable uptick in the number of consoles purchased while the general public in the UK have been staying at home.

console deals chart
Data normalised to reflect the relative changes in buying trends for the three consoles; data does not account for total unit sales.” Source: Console Deals.

As the site points out, these numbers are significantly more impressive when considering that these purchases have largely been made during a time without retail sales or discounts. The Nintendo Switch has also mostly been only available as a bundled purchase, putting the console’s price point closer to the £400 range.

Perhaps even more impressively, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have been hitting high sales numbers even though both consoles are reaching the end of their days as the latest-gen consoles, with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X due out this holiday season.

As Console Deals points out, the Xbox One “not only sold four times as many units as the equivalent period in 2019, but double what it sold in 2018 for the same two month period.”

Have you bought a console during lockdown? Or have you gotten really into a new game or two or seven? Let us know in the comments below.

More about the topics: console sales, consoles, nintendo, Nintendo Switch, playstation 4, Sony, xbox, xbox one