The dreaded ‘out of stock’ message which was seen by millions worldwide when accessing the many retail sites stocking the new generation of consoles.
November was the long anticipated first worldwide release for the new generation consoles. The almighty Playstation 5. With many releases on lots of retail sites, it was expected to be as smooth as silk. Although this was not the case for anyone trying to get their hand on one. Since everyone was locked at home because of the pandemic, it meant the only way to get the console was online. Simple enough right?
Wrong. The consoles had limited stock as Sony could not cater to the huge demand from all over the world. This promotes huge chances for profit which involves exploiting the copious amounts of people waiting to get their hands on one. Known as ‘scalpers’ by the media and self-proclaimed ‘resellers’ they are the worst enemy of a PlayStation 5 consumer. Driving up the “as new” resell price thereby netting a lot of profit.
This leads to the question of how does one learn to buy not only one PlayStation 5 but multiple units, competing against the hundreds of thousands of irritated customers watching an “out of stock” screen.
Using popular platforms such as Discord and Slack, ‘reselling groups’ have been around for a while, providing opportunities to their members to make profits in hundreds of ways. With many features available for their paying members, they have access to many features which assists them in activities like buying out PlayStation 5 stock.
Reports of exploiting websites which allows them to skip past queues meaning they have unlimited tries at buying the PlayStation has caused even more madness in the news.
Continually, groups such as JuicedIO provide key tools needed to support their members in being more successful. Website “monitors” are a key feature commonly used here, made by skilled developers, their sole purpose is to refresh a website in record speeds and alert the group when an item is back in stock. The word speed is key here, as they will be competing against other groups to have the fastest response time and make the most profit.
Not to mention software which is used by most resellers. Their goal is to check out a product as quickly as possible whilst not being detected. Also known as ‘bots’.
However, do not think it is an easy task getting your hands on software like this. Its made extremely exclusive and if you wanted to buy one second hand you can expect to invest more than $1500. Developers for this software took to the new demand where they added modes which supported sites dropping the new PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Adding even more second hand value to the software, as well as pressuring retail sites to ensure everyone has a fair chance at getting one.
Retail sites such as Game have tried to stop these bots with countless strategies. But this isn’t the only problems sites like Game are experiencing. With so much traffic there is bound to be server problems causing crashes on the website. Aggravated tweets and messages talking about how the site was not even accessible during the release meant no one was able to checkout.
“200,000 people in the queue ahead of me WTH” Hard to tell how many of these “200,000” people were real as bots can run many simultaneous tasks which means they can act as multiple customers. Adding salt to the wound.
But people waiting to get their hands on the PlayStation 5 at retail pricing find themselves waiting longer and longer on false claims about restocks of the console.
“There’s still no sign of the PS5 at Very, despite rumours suggesting restocks would go live by 2pm.” Making it much harder for a normal consumer to purchase the console as they cannot even work out when the console will be available again.
If you had enough of waiting for these unclear restocks, you can find yourself paying upwards of £700 on resell sites like StockX compared to the retail being £449.99.
But Sony claims that they will aim to make the console more widely available towards the start of 2021. We’ll see about that!
