The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch (EDIT: See mod note in first post for new rule).

[Fight-the-Streets]

Norion said:

Fight-the-Streets said:

I just had a thought:

The worldwide lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022 led to higher-than-usual birth rates. These “Corona babies” are now coming of age, which may be contributing to additional Nintendo Switch sales.

Many people believe that the pandemic directly caused extra Switch sales because people were stuck at home. But perhaps that view is slightly off. It may not be the increased sales during the pandemic itself — since many of those buyers would likely have purchased a Switch sooner or later anyway — but rather the additional children born during that time who are now reaching gaming age and driving new sales.

Where did you see that? Fertility rates weren't boosted during those years and in fact declined in at least most places.

From a purely logical perspective: When people are forced to stay at home, sex becomes a popular pastime, and contraception is not always used consistently. This pattern can also be observed in years with prolonged power outages, storms, floods, or heavy snowfall, when people are compelled to stay indoors for extended periods. Such years tend to produce slightly higher numbers of births. The COVID-19 pandemic lasted unusually long, so one would expect its effects to show up statistically as well.

It is a complex topic. My fellow ChatGPT focuses more on the general long-term trend, which indeed still points toward declining birth rates in industrialized countries. Nevertheless, during the lockdown years, more children were conceived than would likely have been the case without them.