Sony ended its PS5 hypestream last night with the announcement on social media that pre-orders would be open from today. But that didn’t stop some retailers from opening pre-orders immediately instead, and the subsequent panic to get one resulted in a lot of 404s, glitches, and eBay listings of up to $25,000 (!) for suckers who didn’t get one in time.
In the US, online and realspace retailers including Walmart, Amazon, and Target opened up pre-orders early to instant anarchy, with GameStop’s website even serving a DDoS error to users in the click-frenzy.
“Not only are these listings flickering in and out of stock and erroring out of adding items to your cart,” The Verge reports, “we’ve also had them ripped out of our cart in the middle of a transaction.”
Multiple vendors have since sold out, and inevitably, entreprenurial unscrupulous people are exploiting the situation for maximum profits – eBay, for example, now features “confirmed pre-order” listings of the $499 console from $2500 up.
I knew it wouldn’t take long for PS5 scalpers to rock up. pic.twitter.com/VjnSytZLsl
— Darryn (@Darrangedd) September 17, 2020
Not one to miss an opportunity for cheap marketing, Xbox jumped in to promise that this won’t be a problem when Xbox Series X and S pre-orders open next week.
Pre-order 👉 September 22
Worldwide launch in 36 countries 👉 November 10
Hype 👉 9000+
(don’t worry – we’ll let you know the exact time pre-orders start for you soon) pic.twitter.com/SLUrrtszyN
— Xbox (@Xbox) September 17, 2020
Obligatory joke about “nobody is going to pre-order the Xbox more like FAILBOX amirite lol”, but I’m pre-ordering an Xbox Series X and I don’t need this kind of existential anxiety on a Thursday.
The PS5 launches on 19 November in South Africa.