Scalpers, FOMO, and the next gen

The PlayStation 5's extended family of the console and its peripherals (image courtesy of Sony)

These past few weeks, the launch of the PlayStation 5 and XBOX Series X has coincided with mass frustration and stress around the world as people have scrambled to buy the new consoles, albeit largely unsuccessfully. Launch days were met with server crashes, stock being sold out within seemingly seconds of release, and a lot of angry customers eager to get their hands on the next generation of consoles.

Among this and compounding it was the opportunists waiting to get many consoles to sell on for an exorbitant price, more commonly known as scaplers who operate in just about any circle where things can be bought and sold. With the unavailability of the consoles being predictable, scalpers immediately jumped on the pre-orders and day one sales to re-sell them for increases in price as minor as £50 and as high up as roughly £800.

Despite such a gargantuan price gouging, these egregious tactics have been proven to work with scalper organisations claiming to have secured as many as 1,000 consoles each and clearly, going by monitoring the stock from each website, managing to sell these off for as much as £1,200 each for what should be £450 consoles. It would be easy to pin this entire process on the scalpers themselves, and while their greed is reprehensible, the success of their tactics is indicative of a larger problem in the industry.

To put it simply, scalpers' success would be null and void if people didn't buy from them. The success of scalpers and scalper organisations relies on the people willing to pay more than double just to get their hands on these products, so desparate to get in on the next generation as quickly as possible that, after failing against other fanatics, they'd pay whatever price they can for even the possibility of ending up with a new PlayStation or XBOX. If no one bought from scalpers, they'd end up with numerous extra consoles that would have to be sold on for a regular price down the line.

So the buck is now passed to the customers desperate for a console, but even that can be traced back to the wider culture of FOMO (fear of missing out) that the gaming industry as a whole has propogated. The rise of limited or even day one editions of games over the past decade has shown a general trend towards people feeling like they need to get games as soon as possible, alongside the building of hype that leads up to most AAA game releases. Of course this kind of hype has been built up in spades for a brand new generation of consoles, with both being teased and advertised for well over a year, and the payoff for all that has resulted in ample opportunities for that hype to be taken advantage of for profit.

In the end, this creates a cycle of desire, demand, and scarcity; Sony and Microsoft advertise and hype up the new consoles, people want them, people flock in droves to buy them, they sell out, and the demand is driven up, leading some people to get the consoles any way they can. No doubt, Microsoft and Sony don't care much about scalpers since the consoles being sold on are still being bought from their respective companies, the building of excitement paid off and demand has driven up significantly because of it.

Ultimately, the best thing to do as someone who wants to get into the next gen is to be patient. With neither console having many next gen offerings at the moment, getting the consoles now or in a few months doesn't make all that much of a difference; and while looking on the practice of scalping can be frustrating it is equally important not to waste your money by giving into the opportunists, instead waiting for the consoles to be on sale again for their actual price.