We are three months into this new age of gaming, and yet it’s more difficult than ever to obtain a PlayStation 5. Sony informed gamers last summer that there would be a shortage come launch day, but nobody anticipated the astronomical gap between the supply and the demand. The gaming industry has been growing at a rapid rate in the past decade, and 2020 alone brought in $180 billion of revenue. To that extent, it’s no surprise that the industry can’t keep up with the amount of growth and interest. Sony sold 2.5 million consoles on launch day, making it the best launch to date in the company’s history. By comparison, the PlayStation 4 sold 2.1 million in its first month back in 2013. To say that the gaming community has grown in seven years is a vast understatement. So why can’t Sony keep up with the demand?
If you ask any gamer who is keen on the intricacies of the industry, the first thing they might blame is scalpers. For those who don’t know, a scalper is someone who buys a product and resells them at inflated prices for profit. If you’ve ever been to a sporting event and saw someone loitering and selling last-minute tickets out by the front gates, they’re most likely a scalper. The practice of scalping has been rising in this age of the internet and entire companies and groups make livings off this trade. As of February, Sony has sold 4.5 million units, and according to data analyst Michael Driscoll, scalpers are responsible for approximately 10-15% of those sales. The process often requires scalpers to send in millions of bots to automatically purchase the entire stock of a major chain store like Best Buy. Then the purchaser resells them on various websites like eBay at much higher prices, which often surpasses $1,100. Much of the gaming community is disgruntled with this practice. Needless to say, everyone (except for the scalpers) agrees that this isn’t a consumer-friendly practice and corporations like Wal-Mart and Target are working to strengthen their systems against these purchasing bots. The United Kingdom is currently debating on criminalizing scalping.
Scalpers aren’t the sole reason. Another major roadblock is the COVID-19 pandemic. Sony’s CEO Jim Ryan stated in an interview with GQ that “supply chains would become a little more complicated than would normally be the case”.
If you’re not one to keep an ear to the ground on the development of technology, there’s been a major semiconductor shortage in 2020. In case you don’t know what that means, these little chips are used in nearly every piece of technology you own. From computers to phones and even game consoles, the current dependency on these little devices has caused huge roadblocks in developing the PS5. President Biden has launched a 100-day review of supply chains and pledged billions into revitalizing production on the semiconductors, as more than just the gaming industry is handicapped by this problem.
The last possible reason is pure human error. The pre-orders for the PS5 were chaotic thanks to bad communication. Many folks were placed on a waiting list for pre-orders and then were never informed when the various retailers came into stock, which would sell out in mere moments, leaving the websites like Wal-Mart’s to crash. Sony eventually apologized for this debacle and admitted they could have communicated better.
It’ll be a while before the PlayStation 5 is as accessible as its predecessors are. Microsoft, who makes the Xbox Series X, stated that they would be supply-constrained until June. Though that’s a different corporation with its own problems, hopefully, this is a sign that the tail end of 2021 will provide a much easier time for consumers when it comes to hunting a new console.
