https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/ugrozami-vy-nichego-ne-izmenite-perekupshiki-ps5-i-xbox-rasskazali-kak-rabotaet-etot-biznes-v-rossii-i-kogda- zakonchitsya-deficit-konsolei

“There is a popular story in Russia when the sellers of chain stores are engaged in some kind of schemes with prefixes,” says reseller Dmitry. He is 20 years old, he studied at MADI, but recently took the documents from there. Since November, he has been reselling PS5 and Xbox consoles, and before that he earned money by buying sneakers. In three months, he sold more than 50 PlayStation 5 and 12 Xbox Series X / S.

By the end of 2023, Sony had sold 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles. This is a record starting point for the entire gaming industry. However, most of the consoles went to dealers, who resell them for one and a half to two times more than the official price. On New Year’s Eve, speculators raised prices for PS5 up to ₽120 thousand at the recommended price of ₽37-47 thousand in chain stores. We decided to figure out how resellers work in Russia.

“Large wholesalers in Moscow immediately get 300-400 PlayStation 5”

Retailers are trying to fight resellers and work according to the “one PS5 in one hands” rule. However, Nikita Pasichny, co-founder of a discord server for resellers, said that his customers were “taking out” 15 consoles from stores at a time. He assures that store security measures can be easily circumvented.

At first, the server in Discord had only a store monitoring program – it tracked the arrival of STBs on the retailer’s websites. As soon as there was a “restart” somewhere, a message came to Discord with a link. It is enough to click on it – and the product is already in your cart.

However, Pasichny’s team went further: the coders wrote the ACO (Auto Check Out) software for one of the chain stores’ websites. The program does everything by itself: “” Monitor “pings about the loading of goods on the site, the software adds it to the basket, enters the pre-specified personal data of the person, and the store checks them. The reseller can only pray that the order will not be canceled, and to top up the balance of his card in time, ”he said.

According to Dmitry, in Russia such software was developed only for the OZON store. However, unlike “monitors”, the ACO service is useless when large quantities are delivered to retailers. In such cases, the set-top boxes are easier to “pick up by hand” using the “monitor” of one of the channels in Telegram or Discord.

The reseller pays for participation in such a group RUB 2 thousand per month. However, becoming a member of such a community is problematic – everything is determined by an internal vote in the group, as a result of which your candidacy may be rejected. Some of these groups cannot be entered at all for any money. They work only “for their own” and much faster than their counterparts. Such channels are created for “outbid sharks” who buy set-top boxes in large quantities.

After the purchase, large resellers start looking for customers. Amateurs do not “get their hands dirty” and sell consoles to larger dealers. This is what Igor does (the name was changed at the request of the hero) and receives $ 7-10 thousand from each console. Previously, he also dabbled in sneakers, but saw the shortage of consoles as an opportunity to earn more and managed to buy ten PS5s and two Xbox Series X / S. According to him, giving the prefix to dealers is easier than trying to implement it yourself. Previously, he tried to do this through Avito, but regularly encountered fraudsters there.

For similar reasons, large resellers usually do not sell consoles directly to gamers, but deliver them to online stores and electronics markets in Moscow. Here Dmitry comes into play – he is an intermediary between dealers and stores. Dmitry is looking for those who are ready to buy consoles in bulk. Usually these are sellers of the Moscow electronics markets. From each set-top box, he receives ₽2 thousand, while selling about 10-20 pieces at a time.

One of the places where consoles are often brought up is Andrey’s store (the name was changed at the request of the hero) in the Gorbushkin Dvor shopping center. He says that he takes 15-20 PlayStation 5s every week, and not in chain stores, but from dealers from Telegram channels. Since November, the store has purchased only 30 set-top boxes from retailers, and took the rest in bulk from resellers for about RUB 57,000 per console. At retail, you can take a PS5 from them for about 65 thousand rubles. According to the seller, this is no longer a secondary, but a tertiary market.

According to various sources, from the sale of one PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, the store owner receives from ₽3–10 thousand. Andrey assures that he earns ₽3–4 thousand from each sale. At the time of publication of the material, resellers sell set-top boxes to market traders for about ₽56 thousand and have a profit of about ₽9 thousand from one console. In electronics markets and online stores, the price is raised to about RUB65 thousand.

At the same time, resellers never know how much the set-top box will cost tomorrow. The price of the PlayStation 5 rises and falls by ₽5-7 thousand. It depends on the number of consoles on sale. If 150 set-top boxes were delivered to one of the chain stores today, most resellers will not sell consoles for the next week, because they have fallen in price due to a new delivery. “When these 150 copies are bought up, the price of the“ secondary ”grows again,” says Igor.

According to Dima, in 2023 there were no large shipments of consoles yet. Because of this, prices have risen to ₽70 thousand. He clarifies that when reselling sneakers, resellers always know the approximate circulation, but in the case of the PlayStation 5, such data are not disclosed.

“If they write to me on Avito, there are insults. If they call, they try to cheat ”.

STB resellers face threats on a regular basis. This was the case in Canada, where the police reported several cases attacks on resellers. Dummy customers came to meetings with resellers with weapons, beat them and robbed them. Businessmen are not favored in the network either – they are considered by gamers to be guilty of the fact that consoles are difficult to buy at the recommended price. Many even supported the robbers and said that the dealers got what they deserved.

The creator of a large marketplace, who wished to remain anonymous, said that resellers often “add fuel to the fire” themselves. They “fly” into the chats of people who want to buy a console, and begin to “tease” them. Often the dealers themselves are to blame for such an attitude towards them, he believes.

However, Dmitry does not understand the anger of the console fans. The reseller disagrees with the accusations of the players and believes that he and his colleagues are working according to the laws of business:

The reseller Igor also considers the criticism unfounded, since the consoles cannot be called a basic commodity. In his opinion, the gamers themselves are partly to blame for not being able to purchase the product in chain stores.

HSE professor and investor Evgeny Kogan also stood up for the resellers. In his opinion, they only make the gaming market more liquid.

At the same time, Andrei is indignant: it is the shops and small dealers who get the threats and insults, not the piranhas. He also asked not to include his real name and the name of the store in the text, because does not want problems with “these same” piranhas “”.

Igor says that his friends, resellers, also have “a lot of such stories.”

Often third parties – scammers – interfere in transactions on set-top boxes. Igor told about this case: once he came to a meeting with a buyer to give him the console, but the person with whom the telephone conversations were going on was no longer waiting for him. It turned out that Igor and the buyer had been coordinated by a fraudster all this time. He asked the buyer to transfer money to his account, and he called Igor a courier. Then the buyer had to transfer money to the fraudster and come to a meeting with Igor for the console, so that in the end he was left with nothing – after all, Igor, without receiving payment, could not give him the order. According to the reseller, that time he managed to warn the client in time, but similar cases occur regularly.

PS5 fans, who have taken up arms against resellers, forget about unscrupulous chain store sellers who have “their own chips to intercept pre-orders for consoles,” the speakers say. According to Nikita Pasichny, employees of retailers do not need to “drain” familiar resellers the date of the next delivery of the batch to the store. And if you “agree well”, then they can also postpone the prefix.

Dmitry assures that two operators worked in Citylink who reissued orders for other people. If a person had time to place an order, then the operators simply changed his name in the database and passed the device to their friends. “These employees seem to have already“ covered up the shop ”. However, I myself got into a similar situation when they called me from the store and said that the order was ready. I arrived, and it turned out that the console was no longer available. Although she was still waiting for me at the base, ”he said.

In “Citylink” did not respond to the statements of the heroes of the material about the unscrupulous employees of the store.

“Rising Sony Stock Price Correlates With PS5 Deficit”

It is believed that not only buyers but also Sony itself suffer from resellers. According to Bloomberg, the company suffers losses due to resellers. The set-top boxes themselves are produced at a disadvantage due to expensive semiconductors. Usually, this difference is covered by the implementation of games for devices, but it was their sales that fell sharply due to the actions of resellers.

The normal ratio of sold copies of consoles and games is one to one. Bloomberg cited the example of selling games and the PlayStation 5 in Japan. During the starting month, the company sold 213 thousand PS5s. At the same time, the circulation of the three best-selling games for the console amounted to 63 thousand in retail. Bloomberg experts fear that Sony fans may turn their backs on her due to speculators. This will slow down sales and affect the company’s revenue.

“All this is nonsense,” says HSE professor Yevgeny Kogan. He believes Sony is simply intriguing the product. At the same time, the company’s shares continue to grow, despite speculation: at the time of publication of the material, the price of one Sony share increased by 32% compared to its value in September 2023. That month, the company announced a price and release date for the PS5.

Perhaps the main rabbit that Sony is killing is the logical explanation for the price increase on the PS5. In February 2023, Bloomberg reported that the production costs of one console would be around $ 450. That’s more than the company spent on the PS4. All because of the expensive components of the console and the lack of semiconductors. It is driven by a surge in electronics demand and the adoption of 5G technology. This forced the company to raise prices for new consoles at the expense of competing with Microsoft.

Apparently, that’s why Sony hid to the last how much the set-top box would cost. For comparison, the price of the same PS4 was announced in February 2013, and the console itself was released in November of the same year. In the case of the PS5, which also came out in November, Sony announced the price just two months before the release. Bloomberg called this a “wait and see approach.” And Sony’s CFO Hiroki Totoki said in February 2023 that he could not discuss the cost of a product due to factors that are difficult to take into account in advance. Then he added that the company should correctly determine the volume of the initial production and adjust the promotion strategy depending on the price level of the PS5.

Perhaps the situation with resellers is part of Sony’s promotion strategy – to use the shortage of PS5 components in such a way as to draw attention to the product, cause an increase in the value of corporate shares and goods in the secondary market, and then raise the price on it in the primary market. There is some truth in this, says Igor. Although Nikita Pasichny is sure that this strategy is unprofitable for Sony. In his opinion, at the start of the company, it is imperative to sell as many consoles and games as possible.

However, Russian stores have already raised prices for the PlayStation 4. All due to the high demand for the old generation console. It is caused by the curtailment of PS4 production due to a shortage of the new PS5. Now the price of PS4 Pro reaches ₽43 thousand.

When will it all end?

Resellers believe they are not to blame for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S shortage, but the chain stores. They simply were not ready for the hype:

Игорь утверждает, что у обычного покупателя есть шанс получить PlayStation 5. Сам перекупщик смог заказать 12 приставок вручную. Если товара не было в наличии в магазинах, то ему перезванивали, как только продукт появлялся на складе.

Реселлер также сомневается в безоговорочной победе ботов на рынке, по крайней мере, в России, где их еще не так много. При этом он имеет в виду именно тех ботов, которые быстро оформляют заказы. Но с другой стороны, существуют «мониторы», которые делаются очень легко — Игорь утверждает, что их может создать любой опытный программист, написав несколько строчек кода.

Сообщества геймеров со всего мира придумывают меры борьбы с перекупщиками. Наиболее радикальные распространены в Индии. Там члены сообщества IndianGaming на reddit массово мониторят объявления реселлеров на местных аналогах «Авито», а затем жалуются на этих продавцов.

Другой подход обсуждают в Британии. Ранее в парламенте выступили с идеей запрета ботов. В государстве уже есть похожий закон для продавцов билетов: их заставляют сообщать о себе расширенные данные, чтобы лишить возможности приобрести несколько билетов в одни руки.

Евгений Коган считает, что эта инициатива «выписана по рецепту Советского Союза, где давали одну палку колбасы в одни руки». Он уверяет, что такие законопроекты ведут к ухудшению качества товаров и услуг. Андрей добавил к словам профессора ВШЭ, что эта мера хороша только для крупных бизнесменов. Она устраняет мелких конкурентов — малый бизнес.

Впрочем, такая проблема не только у Sony и Microsoft, отмечает Пасичный. Он взял в пример видеокарты от NVIDIA.

Однако прогноз на развитие ситуации у реселлеров оптимистичный. Все они говорят, что ажиотаж вокруг консолей может утихнуть уже летом. В то же время Bloomberg пугает, что кризис приставок нового поколения может захватить даже следующие новогодние праздники.