What console is the dirtiest one?

Play games has become a routine activity and for many of us is our main hobby. We use to play video games around 7.5 hours per week. It we consider that year 2021 has 52 weeks, we are going to play an average of 390 hours. An interesting time of dedication, but have you ever wondered how dirty is your console? According to research from Betway Casino, our consoles and PCs are dirty.

Betway has conducted an experiment analyzing 12 sets of consoles and computers randomly selected. A kitchen table and a toilet seat were included in the analysis as well, just with purely comparative interest.

Microorganisms colonize our gaming systems

The pandemic has reminded us how important it is to wash our hands after performing certain activities, but did you know our consoles are home for a large number of microorganisms?

Gaming consoles have 3X more bacteria than a toilet seat, which has an average of 30 microorganisms growths. If you want to know in detail: PlayStation 4 has 73 colonies of bacteria, Xbox One 63, Switch 55 and a PC, 165 colonies of bacteria. Surprised? There is more.

PlayStation 4

The best selling console in the last generation did not win the cleaning competition. Overall, the system analyzed had 72.5 colony-forming bacteria units per swab taken. This is 2.4X more bacteria than the bacteria found on a toilet seat. Buttons and joysticks are the favorite part for bacteria to settle in the PlayStation pad.

Xbox One

Microsoft produced one of the cleanest systems yet. Xbox consoles tested had 62.5 colony-forming bacteria units per swab. That’s 2X bacteria that found on a toilet seat. Xbox game triggers were one the cleanest one with only 15, however, controller handles reached 82.5.

Switch

Nintendo created a hybrid console. A machine to be used at home or outside with no limitations. If you can use Switch in a not under control environment, Switch should be dirtiest one, right? Nintendo’s console showed the lowest median of forming bacteria units per swab with 55. This is the double of bacteria that you can found in a toilet seat, but is a low number considering the measures obtained in Xbox and PlayStation. Joy-Cons are reasonably clean, but buttons were at 62.5.

Master race keeps the trophy about “the dirtiest game system ever” by far. Keyboards had a median of 165 per swab, but mouse reunited a swab of 247.5 colony-forming units. This is 27.5X the bacteria that you can found in a toilet seat.

Control pads under the microscope

PlayStation 5 was designed win a detachable panel system to remove dust, however, old systems were created in a different time and clean actions are more complicated to perform. Game pads connect us with the games, with the experience, but are hubs to facilitate germs spreading. How dirty are our controllers?

PlayStation, Xbox and Switch share the order of dirtiest areas: Triggers, joysticks and handles as the dirtiest part of game pads. Speaking about PCs, On button, is the dirtiest component, followed by the keyboard and the mouse.

Science to the gamers

Spore was a god game with a strategy component designed by Will Wright, known for his work on The SIMS. If you are a nostalgic Spore gamer, maybe you want to know more about the concrete microorganism that live in our consoles and PCs. Take note: Bacillus SPP, Staphylococcus/Micrococcus and Mould (yeah, like the enemies appeared in Resident Evil 7).