This is why it's hard to get a PS5..

elk1007

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Then you have to hope the delivery driver doesn't replace the box contents with stuff like cat food and cheap kitchen appliances.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/amazon-uk-ps5-theft

Sounds like the UK, bruv.

On game shops not selling incidentals. I am sure they have very long lists of associated sales with consoles, which without knowing anything other than my observations of launches over the years I shall still bet it all on being "little and less". Bonus the second is if most of these are realised with straight cash rather than trade in then they also are spared that headache, which probably also makes up for the lack of local game sales if the middle income area consoles themselves are being plundered for the more money than sense/meh it is just $1000 crowd.

Could you please reword this? I'm not understanding.
 
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gamesquest1

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honestly it all boils down to supply and demand, there isn't that much people can do, even if you take out the bots there are still tons of shop employees who get first dibs on sales and resell at a higher price, back in the wii days I had a friend telling me how the new wii stock was basically being treated as a Christmas bonus by him and his colleagues, they got a grand total of 75 consoles in just before Christmas, 25 of which went to members of staff and another 25 were "lost" until their friends/family came into the shop and they suddenly found the "missing" stock in the back room, so 66% of their entire stock went to themselves or friends and family sure a few of them were no doubt used for Christmas presents etc but i'm sure the vast majority were just flipped for profit, cant remember what the prices were anymore, but he basically said he doubled his money

now if nobody ever bought at inflated prices there would be no demand, and thus no reasoning to bother buying up the stock, likewise if you had manufacturers release in plenty of time for Christmas with plenty of stock to the point its unfeasible for anyone to be able to gobble up the entire supply, nothing else is really going to work, captcha's to block sales? not going to work, if someone has a bot script running, they can just keep an eye on it for when the captcha pops up and do it on each bot system, this is especially easy when the consoles are dropping at a specific time, and even if you block all bots, you still have loads of people who don't care about the console in the slightest but see an opportunity to make a few bucks for very little effort, take the bots out of the equation and you just substitute them for lots more individual "scalpers" to jump onboard and gobble up stock anyway, this type of thing has happened way before internet sales or bots entered the equation, they just consolidated all the scalps into the hands of a few instead of a few thousand people the end result is pretty much the same for the end consumer regardless

basically if you want to see an end to scalping you either need to fix the supply issues or fix the demand issues i.e produce more stock or make such a shitty console that nobody even wants to buy it

at this point, the way I see these seasonal consumer frenzy parties, is its basically like a lottery, try your luck, if you get it, you get it, if you don't you don't and you will just have to wait a month or so to get it at a reasonable price your happy to pay, maybe be sure to prepare your children they might need to wait till just after Christmas for their gift, yeah it sucks, but if more people did so the demand would be quelled to such a degree that maybe just maybe let opportunists jump on a great opportunity to make a tidy profit, like them or not its perfectly understandable why someone would want to do something if it improves their own life and doesn't hurt anyone in the process
 
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FAST6191

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Could you please reword this? I'm not understanding.

Game consoles and incidentals.
Others earlier were imagining the game shops would lose out if the bots buy them rather than buying overpriced sweeties, little statues of pop culture figures and whatever other high profit nonsense they do as the scalpers/bots would presumably not be buying that (at least until bot detection algos note it and like spammers doing aoihgdkjghfkjghfkjfh in the middle of their email to weight word filtering, possibly to return later once they evaded and items were delivered).
I imagine however the game shops/whatever selling them have very long lists of people buying game consoles at launch and whatever else it is they sell going back decades now ( http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter01.php , sorry for the wasted few hours if that is your first time on acts of gord).
Despite me not having access to those lists I have been at several or spoken to those that man the shops over the decades now.
Singles sell out, maybe with a game, maybe with another controller (granted split screen at this point in time is a largely forgotten affair).
Bundles sell out next, unless it is a rare one which tends not to be console launch. Unless it is the UK and in that case Game/EB often shrink wrapped a crap game with it and people tended to resent that, especially when it represented "most" (read all but I can't prove it for every occasion) of the stock.
Nobody however is browsing and buying junk. Straight business those nights/periods.

Anyway beyond that if all these bots and scalpers are rocking up with straight cash then you don't simultaneously end up with a bunch of second hand PS4s and xbones (and phones and bad games and whatever else such shops take) to deal with both on the night and going forward (if you now have 500 of the things you lack the space and have to drop prices, to say nothing of Sony/MS presumably wanting their cut while you sit there with all the money tied up in second hand PS4s nobody wants because it is old news).

Another that some might be concerned with is if all the PS5s in a middle income area get bought out and sent off to the rich area that the middle income shop will not see any game sales. Maybe not at first but in a month or three when stock comes back in and the kids that saved up for a while to get one can get one (or get another if they flipped their preorder for profit) they will be back just the same, which also will be choice timing as you might actually have some games worth playing.
 
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godreborn

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Just blame Sony, they're the ones who can't keep a new item in stock worth a damn.

I think where they really fucked up was giving you no time to prepare for preordering. they were just suddenly available after some sort of release video from what I remember. at least microsoft told you when you could buy a series s/x a couple weeks in advance.
 
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gamesquest1

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I think where they really fucked up was giving you no time to prepare for preordering. they were just suddenly available after some sort of release video from what I remember. at least microsoft told you when you could buy a series s/x a couple weeks in advance.
that could arguably be a positive if you looking to fend off general non interested scalpers who just saw the buzz around the news and that motivated them to go try buy one to resell, or the more professional bot farm operators not having the time to perfect their bot script as the people who are first to the news would be those genuinely interested and waiting for the drop

I think the main issue here is just supply, pretty much every tech device over the past few months has been short on supply due to obvious reasons

I think one thing websites could use to fend off some bots would be using layout/ page name changes etc to buying/pre order pages to screw with the bots, maybe just switch random high value dummy items into old links to make bots buy dummy fake items and tie their money up for a while and log their bank/delivery details to exclude from ps5 purchases for a month or something
 
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elk1007

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Game consoles and incidentals.
Others earlier were imagining the game shops would lose out if the bots buy them rather than buying overpriced sweeties, little statues of pop culture figures and whatever other high profit nonsense they do as the scalpers/bots would presumably not be buying that (at least until bot detection algos note it and like spammers doing aoihgdkjghfkjghfkjfh in the middle of their email to weight word filtering, possibly to return later once they evaded and items were delivered).
I imagine however the game shops/whatever selling them have very long lists of people buying game consoles at launch and whatever else it is they sell going back decades now ( http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter01.php , sorry for the wasted few hours if that is your first time on acts of gord).
Despite me not having access to those lists I have been at several or spoken to those that man the shops over the decades now.
Singles sell out, maybe with a game, maybe with another controller (granted split screen at this point in time is a largely forgotten affair).
Bundles sell out next, unless it is a rare one which tends not to be console launch. Unless it is the UK and in that case Game/EB often shrink wrapped a crap game with it and people tended to resent that, especially when it represented "most" (read all but I can't prove it for every occasion) of the stock.
Nobody however is browsing and buying junk. Straight business those nights/periods.

Anyway beyond that if all these bots and scalpers are rocking up with straight cash then you don't simultaneously end up with a bunch of second hand PS4s and xbones (and phones and bad games and whatever else such shops take) to deal with both on the night and going forward (if you now have 500 of the things you lack the space and have to drop prices, to say nothing of Sony/MS presumably wanting their cut while you sit there with all the money tied up in second hand PS4s nobody wants because it is old news).

Another that some might be concerned with is if all the PS5s in a middle income area get bought out and sent off to the rich area that the middle income shop will not see any game sales. Maybe not at first but in a month or three when stock comes back in and the kids that saved up for a while to get one can get one (or get another if they flipped their preorder for profit) they will be back just the same, which also will be choice timing as you might actually have some games worth playing.

Are you using Google Translate?
 

FAST6191

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Are you using Google Translate?
I am not. Don't think I used overly flowery language or anything in that either.

Will go again though.

Someone earlier said that game shops only selling to scalpers/bots would lose money because they are not selling those stupid statues, sweeties costing 3 times what it costs in the supermarket 3 shops over and whatever else they are using to stave off their slow demise.
However I would bet heavily against the notion of new console buyers rocking up with armfuls of the stuff and saying "oh and a PS5 please". Game shops will know this too as they likely have all the receipts from all the shops saying what sold alongside a new game console every time this has happened for the last 20 or so years at least.
To that end they don't care.

If it is actual normal humans/game players rocking up to buy a console they likely will also be wanting to trade something against it. That then means the game shop also has a whole bunch of old junk someone no longer wants to sell so as to get some cash in. This also while Sony might have said "we let you have a bunch, they appear to have sold, pay me my money". People rocking up with nice credit cards, cash or whatever don't have this issue.

A further one that nobody said but is a "logical" extrapolation is if their stock of PS5s effectively went to the rich end of town that their middle income customers would not be back to buy games.
However said middle income people would be back in 3 months when they get their own (possibly having doubled their money if they sold off theirs they did manage to get to the rich/desperate people). Being a new console launch there are also no games to play and it will take a while for releases to happen so I am sure the game shop knows this too.

In the end the only person that loses is either the rich fool that is parted from extra money (which they seemingly happily gave, or gave into the whining of their crotch fruit), or the excited gamer that has to wait a while to play the no games because it is a new console and none are out yet. Which is to say nobody really loses out in this.
 

Joe88

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Stuff like this has been going on a long time but not on this scale before. It started around the rtx series launch, using modified bots that were originally designed to scalp sneakers off of sales sites, for the low price of $75 a month, people were buying 40 rtx 3080's in less than a second of the online store going in stock, clearing out the whole inventory, even though they claimed they had "anti bot measures", going right to ebay and listing them for $2000 each. Then that naturally extended to the series x and ps5, same story. Than the new amd cards because why not?

Now the problem is desperate parents spending $2000 for that ps5 because little timmy wants it for christmas. They need to stop paying scalpers but I know thats not going to happened, spoiled children and the parents doing it wont stop. I do think if this continues congress might have to step in at some point and a pass a bill saying using bots are banned, bot makers could end up in prison ect since they are charging for bot access (good luck that happening because they cant even pass the bill to give a second stimulus check for the last 5 months)
 
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FAST6191

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I am quite content for spoiled children to have their parents cost an idiot tax.

As far as bots it was earlier than that

That is 2013 describing events of years before, also quite a nice intro to the tech involved for the curious.
That to me says a commodity market (not like the users were in any way technical) custom bot buying millions in value and high unit volume over extended periods, and counter play from another entity. I don't think it is necessarily in the realm of skiddy toy there but eh and ebay sniper programs have been going longer still ( https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=334161 being a 2005 thread discussing software means.

I equally have no idea what basis they would use to block such things in law, much less ones that would not fall foul of any number of underlying principles of law and be struck down as soon as it hits even a baseline court, never mind an appeals court. Such things would likely also trouble high frequency trading bots and I don't imagine any government would step in the way of their financial sector making millions like that (though there have been a few pinged for "unfair practices" like flooding a market with useless requests that slow others down as they have to process them while the noise maker was free to ignore them).
Equally get 5 friends together. Even a modest gaming machine will run about 8 instances of a virtual machine with basic Linux and 1 tab basic browser preloaded with something to strip out some junk (possibly ready in basket with various premade addresses and cards loaded/autofill data*)

*what is bot, what is someone sitting on a javascript debugger and what is autofill is not an easy line to define either. See hacking tools vs debugging vs security tools every time some tech illiterate politico has a brain cell smash together.

Equally while I would join those of the opinion that most congress types would not be able to pass a "oh fuck we are on fire, someone chuck some water on it" bill I don't know that a second round of free money is of similar need.
 
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the_randomizer

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I think where they really fucked up was giving you no time to prepare for preordering. they were just suddenly available after some sort of release video from what I remember. at least microsoft told you when you could buy a series s/x a couple weeks in advance.

Microsoft did something right for once? Impressive.
 
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