In autumn Sony sent for sale Playstation 5 is one of the most coveted tech products of the year, but this event was overshadowed by the activities of speculators who massively buy up scarce supplies, which could have a negative impact on the performance of the gaming division in the long term. Material about this was released by an authoritative business publication Bloomberg, talked to analysts and market experts.
Speculators, aka resellers or simply scalpers who buy consoles from regular retail chains and then sell them on the gray market at inflated prices, have long been an industry problem. But this year, their activities are perceived especially acutely, as the coronavirus has hit production facilities and shifted sales of consoles towards online stores, where scalpers use advanced bot systems to reserve large quantities of iron, leaving ordinary decent users with nothing.…
Angry gamers denounce resellers offering PlayStation 5s up to $ 1300-1400 on sites such as eBay and Twitter. “The launch of the PlayStation 5 is a complete disaster,” wrote one of the players, promising not to fall for the tricks of scalpers. “They can keep these consoles for themselves.”
The threat to Sony is that problems with resellers in a critical start-up period, multiplied by total shortages, could ultimately turn off a part of the audience from the console or slow down sales of games, negatively affecting long-term profits, according to the material. Many gamers also believe that Sony is bad at dealing with speculators, allowing them to make money from fans.
Thousands of consoles currently on sale Sony Interactive Entertainment negatively, they freeze for a certain period from dealers who are not at all interested in purchasing games for the PlayStation 5… Ideally, however, these consoles were to reach a passionate audience as quickly as possible, ready to spend money on software.
“‘The PlayStation 5 could be missing out on a critical opportunity to quickly enter a good hardware / software upward spiral. [в этом году] Sony will earn less than expected, “said Kazunori Ito of Morningstar Research.
Scalpers in the largest markets use bots that monitor online stores around the clock and daily for changes in the assortment, and when pre-orders are opened, they process and pay in just a few seconds – faster than ordinary users.
There are enough people who want to buy the PlayStation 5 at significantly overpriced prices, but not everyone can actively buy games after receiving a console for $ 1000 or more. And the deficit can stretch out for many months, when dealers will continue their business. The situation is so unpleasant that recently it was even discussed in the British Parliament.…
The first values of the attachment rate (the average number of games sold per console) can clearly indicate the problems that Sony faced, Bloomberg writes. A healthy start ratio is when a person purchases at least one game on their console. In the case of the PlayStation 5, this parameter is especially important, since the console itself is sold at a loss, and Sony must make money on software.…
As an example, the publication cites open data on sales in Japan from Famitsu… In the first month, Sony sold 213 thousand consoles in its home region (everything that it could deliver), and the first three games sold in retail with a circulation of only 63 thousand copies… There are currently no PlayStation 5 titles on the charts, while PlayStation 3 titles have been in the same period since its launch in 2006, despite the console launching in Japan with even fewer numbers.
For comparison, as shown in the graph below, in the case of Nintendo Switch the top three bestsellers, which debuted in March 2017, sold as many in the first month as the console itself.
“PlayStation 5 is snapping up, but games are not very good,” Bloomberg writes, citing Japanese charts.
Bloomberg sources, who asked not to disclose their names, said that the supply of components needed to manufacture a custom core PlayStation 5 processor is volatile and slows down the assembly of consoles, which is hitting Sony’s ability to meet demand.… It also means that the company will have to rely on expensive air travel for new shipments of PlayStation 5 around the world for longer – platform holders usually ship consoles to the US and Europe by water, but this is too long, and now Sony cannot wait. More airfreight costs – less profit for the quarter…
“Transporting consoles by air in normal times costs about 10 times more than by water, and now, perhaps the difference is even greater,” – added a spokesman for analytical agency Ace Research.
Sony’s latest forecast for PlayStation 5 shipments this fiscal year (until the end of March 2023) is more than 7.6 million consoles, but the top bar is no longer as big as previously planned, according to Bloomberg sources.…
A Sony spokesman declined to comment on the problem with resellers and did not specify how many consoles the company plans to supply by the end of the fiscal year.
“Although we do not publish details related to the production, we can note that since the beginning of the mass assembly of the consoles, nothing unexpected has happened, and we have not changed the plans,” the letter says.
According to an unnamed Bloomberg source, one major Japanese publisher was so concerned about supply and reseller issues that it even had an internal discussion about bringing its PlayStation 5 games until better times.…
Retailers around the world are taking serious action to discourage resellers. For example, a retail network GameStop informed its employees about the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X shipment this week just an hour before the consoles arrive in stores for real interested gamers to buy. In Japan, employees of points of sale under the wing Nojima Corp. it was ordered to manually recheck each placed order to weed out as many scalpers as possible.
In Russia, new consignments of consoles are expected only in 2023. In December, retail chains will cover orders previously placed by players.
Read also: Slightly Mad’s nightmare has become a reality: EA did not let Take-Two buy Codemasters…
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