What you see here is the elusive Playstation 5. What you don't see here is a person enjoying it. The on-going joy of 2020's holiday release is bleeding well into 2021 and the console's scarcity has hit volcanic eruption levels of rage-inducing.
The real fun fact is that it's not a company manipulating supply & demand and it's not the ever-present pandemic. It's a tale as old as time. The problem here is people (which is a term I use very loosely). Scalpers have been purchasing consoles en masse using a combination of group buying tactics and good ol' fashioned bots. After procuring thousands of systems per restock, they spike the prices at least 100% breaking the pockets and hearts of millions of would-be next-gen gamers. This is unforgivable enough but it's an easy fix: just don't buy from them and there will be no value in the console for them. There are other consequences.
Photo by Martin Katler on Unsplash
DEVELOPERS BECOME COLLATERAL DAMAGE
The consoles are getting sold which is a good look, on paper, for Sony (although each console is getting sold at a loss but we'll touch on that later). With these consoles sitting in the hands of super villains instead of the good people they're intended for, no one is buying games. Scalpers have NO interest in purchasing games, accessories, etc because they just want to flip the consoles. This leaves developers holding the bag. Let's look at the Demon's Souls remake and Spider-man: Miles Morales.
The original Demon's Souls game was released in Feb '09 in Japan with little fanfare and no understanding of how it was going to work. Even Sony thought the game was going to be a bust and the release was a mess. Though it only sold 39K, that was 95% of the copies shipped (because again, they thought so poorly of the game). Months later, in Oct, the American release saw sales of 150K based off nothing more than positive word of mouth and reviews *source*. The Demon's Souls remake, exclusive to the PS5, sold 18K on a console that had 118K units sold *source*. This highly anticipated title couldn't hit what the original did with all the marketing in the world behind it.
Though Miles Morales is just a spin-off/DLC expansion kinda deal, there was a fair amount of hype around the title. The PS4 version sold 22K while the PS5 version, which boasted updated graphics and features along with an Ultimate Edition that features a remaster of the original Spider-man game, sold 18K. The combined numbers (4.1 million) *source* look great but they're not what they should be for a next-gen console that's crushing sales and breaking records...on paper.
If studios aren't getting their predicted ROI (return on investment), it trickles down to R&D and future projects. Also, if a company has to choose whether to create a game for a console that's being held hostage by scalpers or one that has a legitimate install base like, oh I don't know, the Nintendo Switch, which one do you think they're going to go with? People go where the money is and right now, it's not necessarily with next-gen.
Photo by Hello Lightbulb on Unsplash
FIRST PARTIES TAKE A HIT
I know it's difficult to feel bad for a global, multi-billion dollar corporation with all that's going on but the fact of the matter is, they're taking hits from all sides right now. There's a level of distrust that's been building since the days of Wii hunting (what a terrible time smh) which has many consumers thinking this is a marketing ploy to manufacture demand. There's the estimated $170 loss per console sold *source* that they're not getting back from controllers, cameras, and other first party accessories/games being sold. And, as previously touched on, there are the possible long term effects of temporarily losing third party support and having one of those wonderful gaming droughts that are normally reserved for the summer months right at the heart of a holiday season.
SO NOW WHAT
So, assuming you care, where exactly do we go from here? How do we defeat the bots and a pandemic and a supply deficit? Patience. That's literally it. If you'd like to rack your brain and outclass the bot people, live your best life but you could also. . .not. Hear me out: let the scalpers have them.
If they sit around with that inventory for too long, the profit is gone. If we refuse to pay more than market price for them, the profit is gone. If there's no profit to be made, there's no point in buying the systems and over charging for them. Now, imagine if we took this approach from the beginning. By now they'd
have thousands of systems taking Photo by Oleg Magni from Pexels
up room they probably can't afford to give up and would have sank tear inducing amounts of money on a product they can't move. We could be sitting around laughing at them as Sony finally got around to putting more consoles in stores.
On the other side, maaaaaybe it's not the best idea to keep trying to sell consoles online? Wouldn't it be nice for local customers to have a chance to walk into their favorite Target, Best Buy, etc. and be able to actually SEE the console and just buy it? These locations are already open to the public, people are already frequenting them. . .why not go old school on this one and eliminate the bot issues altogether?
So yeah, we're in a pretty rough, albiet trivial, spot but we've been here before. The best thing we can do is just sit back and let these companies figure out the best way to serve us, not break our backs to put more money in their pockets. And if you're buying from scalpers, why? I'd love to know what the thought process was there. "I'm gonna throw extra money at this greedy person because I will die if I don't get this now." Yeah, that uh...that's got to be your only answer. Also, good luck with that extremely rare 'I need it now disease'.