Sony’s PlayStation 5 has been launched, and let’s agree; it’s the hottest gadget on the market right now. Both the hardware and games available for the console are amazing. But not all is good for the next-gen consoles. Apparently, like every good thing in this world, the PS5 is targeted by some real bad things.
According to sources, the consoles are being targeted by the scalpers of the gaming e-commerce world. For those who don’t know, scalpers are those who hunt for devices that are scarce in the market. And then the beautiful people sell those devices at double the market price. It is not only against ethics but also threatens the health of the company.
The fact is that the problem with scalpers has existed for many years, but this year especially, the situation has crossed a specific limit. Due to the pandemic, the supply of the next-gen consoles has taken a significant hit. Not to mention the production of these devices has been squeezed thin.
According to sources, the scalpers are now using sophisticated bots to buy up the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox consoles. It has made gamers across the globe too furious. No one wants to buy something that has the original price of $499 and pay $1400. That’s absurd no matter which country you live in.
“The PlayStation 5 could miss a critical chance to get into a good hardware-software upward spiral. The peak of the platform will likely be low, and the platform’s total revenue earned won’t be as strong as we hoped for.”
When debuting the PS5, Sony hoped that the next-gen console would change our gaming way and enormous profits. The console did elevate our gaming standards, but in terms of profits, it ended up undermining them. And the reason is none other than the relentless attacks from the Scalpers.
How are Scalpers buying the consoles?
They deploy bots that regularly monitor online stores for changes in inventory and supplies. The bots then automatically place orders and check out in seconds when devices become available. If you are familiar with the technique of web-crawling, but these bots are specifically tailored for e-commerce and can sometimes jump to the front of order queues.
“One bot preventative action we implemented just hours before the PlayStation 5 event on Nov. 25 blocked more than 20 million bot attempts within the first 30 minutes alone,” U.S. retail giant Walmart Inc. wrote in a statement Tuesday.
Customers are blaming Sony for not boosting the product supplies and eliminating the profit of scalpers. The company has responded that it will supply more than 7 million consoles by March 2021.
“The real test for the PlayStation 5 is whether the hardware would continue to sell well even when there’s enough supply. You need good games to convince gamers to switch over to the PlayStation 5, you need more outside publishers to release games on the PlayStation 5, and you need to ship more hardware.”
