CNET
Getting hold of the latest, greatest gadget is always a bit of a challenge, but the PlayStation 5 and Xbox X Series is on another level. Since the launch of the products at the end of 2020, thousands of game fans have found that purchasing in the new generation of game consoles is not much more than a frustration exercise. The consoles are almost always in stock. When stores do have stock, they sell out within minutes.
Worse, it’s been like this for months – and it’s no mystery why. Traders made a cottage business by using small armies of shopping bots to buy goods to sell later at a higher price. If you can find a PS5 in the store, you pay $ 499 for a version with a disk drive. Buy it online from a scale and it can bring you back up to $ 999.
This is an issue affecting the sales of game consoles, high-end computer parts and even the sneaker industry. It is also a practice that is almost universally hated by average consumers.
Yet the traders are tired of being seen as the bad guys. According to a new piece in Forbes, many scalpers see the setback of resale as unfair. “All we do is act as a middleman for a limited amount,” one seller told the publication. “Essentially, every business sells their products.” According to the scalper, who was only identified as Jordan, no one complains that a grocery store buys milk from a farmer and sells it twice as much.
Walmart
This is true, but at the same time there are not whole groups like Jordaan’s that want to allow them to monitor all milk shipments and buy up stock before the average consumer can do it. In particular, Jordan tells Forbes that he runs a private ‘cooking group’ that advises scale press on how to obtain the best items like the PlayStation 5. The group monitors hundreds of sites for stockpiles and sends its users, completely clashed with their armies. , to pick up as many consoles as possible.
It takes thousands of consoles off the open market, and it ultimately makes it even harder for average buyers to get their hands on the new generation of game hardware. Yet Jordan and other scalpers see themselves as a plus in the comparison.
“The whole group came close to starting the first UK exclusion and it makes me so happy that I can help people earn extra money for themselves,” Jordan told Forbes. “We also do a lot for charity,” he added, pointing out that some of the fees he charges members of his scalping group go to a local food bank.
For many average players, this rationalization probably does not mean much. The PS5 and Xbox Series X are still almost impossible to find at their price points, and sellers like it Walmart says it is constantly trying to divert bot purchases in favor of legitimate customers.
Unfortunately the problem is probably not going away anytime soon. Bot-powered retailers have become a fact for high-demand products. And if the piece from Forbes is an indication, it seems that scale press behind the operations does not feel bad at all.