Gaming News PS5: Scalpers stuck after two years of financial spree
When the release of a next-gen console comes in the middle of a pandemic, when demand explodes and factories can’t produce enough consoles, scalpers rub their hands. After two years of exploiting the situation, they’re finally looking grim.
The new generation faces a shortage
It’s November 2020 and the next-gen consoles, Xbox Series and PS5, are officially hitting shelves. Only official, because then it’s almost impossible to find them at the regular price if you haven’t managed to pre-order. We could hope that the situation would quickly return to normal, but it wasn’t. Any stock that popped up on the web sold out instantly, and very few consoles made it onto shelves. The main reason for this inventory shortage is the lack of semiconductors resulting from the closure of foundries, mainly in Asia.
Each sector that required these components attempted to secure supplies, with some being given priority while others had to wait as demand remained very strong. The situation has affected the automotive market, smartphones, televisions and even video games, encouraging the United States and the European Union to invest so that the components are more often manufactured on their territory. .
We were therefore faced with enormous demand and manufacturers who could not keep up and were only delivering machines in shambles. During this time, a large parallel market with unscrupulous dealers has developed. Using bots or various sophisticated techniques, they hijacked a number of consoles to resell them at exorbitant prices, especially for the PS5. After the shortage has lasted for a good two years, it’s easy to imagine that they’ve lined their pockets.
Consoles are now easy to find, scalpers are forced to sell their holdings
Things have been going smoothly, but there was a real break a few weeks ago. After a struggle, manufacturers announced they could supply stores in volume and on a regular basis. PS5s or Xbox Series Xs are no longer uncommon at FNAC, Micromania, Cultura or in supermarkets. However, the Sony console remains the star in our region and is widely singled out.
The main consequence of the end of the scarcity is the huge drop in consoles resold by scalpers. The latter can no longer sell their PS5 or their graphics cards above the market price and therefore find themselves with stocks for sale. Also last year, PS5s were easily offered and bought around $800.
Today, scalpers drastically lower their prices and sometimes find themselves below the classic market price ($550 for a PS5, $500 for a Series X and $300 for a Series S) because the stock needs to be sold off. On various forums such as Reddit, gamers seem to be happy about an improvement in the situation, although many of them are urging traders to introduce even more limits to prevent scalpers from buying entire console inventories.
