Why are people not able to buy the Playstation 5?

 Why are people not able to buy the Playstation 5?

By Alex Coralline-Jones

Sony’s newest iteration in the Playstation line of consoles is the single most popular console on the market right now. The Playstation 5 is currently the most powerful console for sale, but this beast is being tamed by a few things, as of right now. It’s in incredibly limited supply, and the non-retail supply that’s out there is really expensive, especially compared to its market price. This has been brought on by several factors, almost all of which are entirely out of Sony’s control. The main two factors of the shortage are side effects of COVID-19, and from malicious intent from people focused only on profit.

First and foremost, the accessibility of the Playstation 5 is being hindered by the global chip shortage brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. These chips, also known as semiconductors, are responsible for a very large amount of things, such as digital displays, and more complex things like assisted parking. They also happen to be used in the Playstation 5. Because of this shortage, anything requiring these chips are in incredibly low stock. The console, which is affected by this shortage quite heavily (since it’s not a necessity like vehicles), is in immensely low stock, and has been for the majority of its lifetime. This clearly clashes with the incredibly high demand of the console, meaning that most people who want the console are not able to buy it.

Another massive reason for the Playstation 5 shortage is the subset of people who don’t actually care about playing on the console, and just buy an insane amount of the available stock, with their only goal being to sell the console at a gigantic markup. These people, known as scalpers, do not care about the feelings of the consumers. They’ve already bought a ton of the available consoles, definitely disappointing potential customers who will actually play it, so if they sell it at such a high price, even if they make people angry, they don’t care. Scalpers have made the average price of PS5s rise drastically, further reducing the amount of people who will ever get the console.

Works Cited

Carcasole, David. “PS5 Scalpers Continue their Reign of Terror.” PlayStation Universe, 16 February 2021, https://www.psu.com/news/ps5-scalpers-continue-their-reign-of-terror/. Accessed 16 May 2022.

Starr, Jake. “Global Chip Shortage Causes More Problems With Sony's PS5 Supply.” GearHungry, 11 February 2022, https://www.gearhungry.com/sony-ps5-chip-shortages/. Accessed 16 May 2022.