Winning a lottery to buy a Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 5 made people measurably happier. During pandemic shortages, stores in Japan used lotteries to decide who got a console, and researchers used that luck of the draw to study 97,602 people. Most research on gaming and mental health just compares gamers with non-gamers, which can't show what causes what. Between 2020 and 2022, consoles were so hard to find in Japan that stores held lotteries, and winning or losing came down to pure chance. Of the people surveyed, 1,773 had entered a Switch lottery and 6,419 a PS5 lottery. The study appeared in Nature Human Behaviour in 2024. Owning a console lowered emotional distress and made people more satisfied with life, with effects ranging from small to moderate. People whose gaming time went up the most after winning improved the most. One console gave smaller benefits to teenagers and women, while the other gave bigger benefits to teenagers. Past three hours of gaming a day, the benefits got smaller. The study also happened during the pandemic, when people were stuck at home, so the effect might be smaller in normal times. For this group, a console won by lottery made people happier, and the gains leveled off after about three hours of play a day.