Knitted Knight
Banned
As many of you have witnessed, whether from afar, or personally, pre-ordering a PS5 has not been an easy task (especially outside the first half hour of the first pre-order wave when pre-orders “erroneously” went live after Sony’s Games Showcase). The PS5 pre-order thread and other individual complaint threads on GAF are witness to the trials and tribulations that many of our fellow Gaffers (and other gamers as a whole), are facing when trying to secure a PS5.
Many have speculated and attributed scarcity to scalpers, online bots, shady GameStop employee’s, whales etc... but the fact is, in the grand scheme of total demand, they represent a very small minority of sales compared to the hundreds of thousands, and millions being snatched up en-masse. The scalper resale market on eBay/Amazon/Craiglist is but a drop in the bucket when total numbers, in the millions, are added up. So while these practices may be frustrating, and may be preventing some of our fellow Gaffers from securing their PS5's; the bigger problem is that there is simply not enough PS5's to go around for everyone.
But if you think scalpers and bots are the only thing you have to worry about then you're wrong my friends. Entering the ring are the homeless.
Homeless people are securing PS5 pre-order spots to sell to desperate gamers in an effort to make a quick buck. Don't believe it? Kid you not..... it's that bad.
Millions of gamers worldwide are showing unprecedented interest in purchasing and pre-ordering a PS5. Whether you're in the U.S/Europe/Asia, you name it, the PS5's go up for pre-order and instantly sell out. You can check out German Gaf, UK Gaf, and NA GAF threads, here, here, here In the U.S, long lines outside popular Games retailer GameStop are common place. Gamers are daring COVID to camp out live for 6, 7, 8, 10 hrs or more with some going away empty handed after the effort. And this is just for the second wave of pre-orders. Even Sony's initiative to reward PlayStation veterans and VIP's a slot is getting saturated by interest.
Some musings....
If there is any positive to the madness is that one of gamings rites of passage, camping out for consolelaunch pre-orders is alive and well. Which says a lot about the console's industry health. This will all be gone in an all digital future dominated by cloud subscription services and digital rental services where physical hardware boxes are extinct.
Anyway; this brings us to the crux of the thread.
Is it safe to say that Sony massively underestimated demand?
Should Sony have had better planning when it comes to making sure they had greater manufacturing capacity in order to meet demand?
Shouldn't the Nintendo Switch hardware sales been a big tell tale sign of the unprecedented demand for gaming hardware during COVID?
IF this is just the pre-ordering phase; how bad will it be at launch when we're practically seeing midnight launch type lines this early in the game?
Is the doubling of production by Sony (to 10m-15m consoles until March 2021) too little to meet demand globally in NA, Europe and Asia combined? Should it have been 20m-30m or more units?
Did Sony not see the writing on the wall when looking at the competitive environment (or lack thereof), its enticing launch line up, and the 45+ million PS+ subscribers that are heavily invested in the ecosystem?
Where did their projections go wrong?
Feel free to discuss these topics and post any crazy stories you've read or witnessed so far about your pre-ordering process for PS5s (or Xbox Series X/S).
Many have speculated and attributed scarcity to scalpers, online bots, shady GameStop employee’s, whales etc... but the fact is, in the grand scheme of total demand, they represent a very small minority of sales compared to the hundreds of thousands, and millions being snatched up en-masse. The scalper resale market on eBay/Amazon/Craiglist is but a drop in the bucket when total numbers, in the millions, are added up. So while these practices may be frustrating, and may be preventing some of our fellow Gaffers from securing their PS5's; the bigger problem is that there is simply not enough PS5's to go around for everyone.
But if you think scalpers and bots are the only thing you have to worry about then you're wrong my friends. Entering the ring are the homeless.
Homeless people are securing PS5 pre-order spots to sell to desperate gamers in an effort to make a quick buck. Don't believe it? Kid you not..... it's that bad.
Millions of gamers worldwide are showing unprecedented interest in purchasing and pre-ordering a PS5. Whether you're in the U.S/Europe/Asia, you name it, the PS5's go up for pre-order and instantly sell out. You can check out German Gaf, UK Gaf, and NA GAF threads, here, here, here In the U.S, long lines outside popular Games retailer GameStop are common place. Gamers are daring COVID to camp out live for 6, 7, 8, 10 hrs or more with some going away empty handed after the effort. And this is just for the second wave of pre-orders. Even Sony's initiative to reward PlayStation veterans and VIP's a slot is getting saturated by interest.
Some musings....
If there is any positive to the madness is that one of gamings rites of passage, camping out for console
Anyway; this brings us to the crux of the thread.
Is it safe to say that Sony massively underestimated demand?
Should Sony have had better planning when it comes to making sure they had greater manufacturing capacity in order to meet demand?
Shouldn't the Nintendo Switch hardware sales been a big tell tale sign of the unprecedented demand for gaming hardware during COVID?
IF this is just the pre-ordering phase; how bad will it be at launch when we're practically seeing midnight launch type lines this early in the game?
Is the doubling of production by Sony (to 10m-15m consoles until March 2021) too little to meet demand globally in NA, Europe and Asia combined? Should it have been 20m-30m or more units?
Did Sony not see the writing on the wall when looking at the competitive environment (or lack thereof), its enticing launch line up, and the 45+ million PS+ subscribers that are heavily invested in the ecosystem?
Where did their projections go wrong?
Feel free to discuss these topics and post any crazy stories you've read or witnessed so far about your pre-ordering process for PS5s (or Xbox Series X/S).
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