Goods of Nintendo game character Isabelle, known as Shizue in Japan, from the Animal Crossing series of video games are displayed at a new Nintendo store during a press preview in Tokyo on November 19, 2019.

The social simulation game allows players to create their own avatar and engage in activities such as fishing and gathering resources across islands, with the aim of building new tools and expanding their virtual homes.

Nintendo 's latest installment of its Animal Crossing franchise, titled New Horizon, was released on March 20 and sold more than 1.8 million copies in its first three days in Japan, according to video game publication Famitsu. In the U.K., the title sold more copies in its first week on the shelves than the launch sales of all previous entries in the series combined, gaming publication gamesindustry.biz reported .

Sales of the latest video games have smashed records as millions are stuck at home after governments around the world locked down entire cities and pushed for social distancing measures to stop the coronavirus from spreading.

A game like Animal Crossing is an antithesis to the difficulties that many people are suffering from the coronavirus outbreak.

Piers Harding-Rolls, research director for games at Ampere Analysis, told CNBC in an email that the early sales figures were "an outperformance on prior expectations."

"Animal Crossing as a Nintendo (intellectual property) has never been a tier-one seller," Harding-Rolls said. "This latest release has shifted the franchise to the big league."

Niko Partners' senior analyst Daniel Ahmad was less surprised. He said the game was "expected to be a strong seller out of the gate" but acknowledged its initial sales performance was "beyond expectations."

Both analysts agreed that the coronavirus outbreak likely had a part to play in the sales spike. In a bid to slow the spread of the virus, major cities in the world have gone into lockdown as people are asked to stay at home and avoid going outside unnecessarily, with some authorities even going as far as shuttering certain businesses that are not deemed "essential." Millions around the world have been cooped up at home as a result of these measures.

"COVID-19 has ultimately helped boost sales as more people are under lockdown and gaming is a safe and low cost form of entertainment," said Ahmad.

Harding-Rolls said the the sales spike was likely partially fueled by "the fact that a lot of gamers have more time on their hands at home at the moment."

He added: "A game like Animal Crossing is an antithesis to the difficulties that many people are suffering from the coronavirus outbreak, so has appealed to a lot of people because of that."

Animal Crossing is not the only title that gaming enthusiasts are flocking to. Multiple reports surfaced last week that first-person shooter, Doom Eternal, launched on March 20, had the best launch weekend in the franchise's history.

"Looking at the data, consumer video game spend has dramatically increased in the past month," said Andrew Little, research analyst at Global X. "In mid-March, we saw that consumers spent around 65% more on video games compared to the same period last year."

Ahmad also cited another game that recently launched — Activision Blizzard's free-to-play first-person shooter, Call of Duty: Warzone, which launched on March 10. Within just ten days, the game drew 30 million players.

"This makes it the fastest growing non-mobile title of all time," Ahmad said.