Gamers hoping to bag a PS5 or Series X this morning brought their beds to GameStops and camped outside the stores for more than 24 hours.
Both PlayStation and Xbox knew ahead of the time that there would not be enough of their new consoles to go around at launch. However, neither company nor those of us who want their products could have anticipated this level of demand. PS5s and Series X consoles are like gold dust right now. In fact, if you happen to have a big bag of gold dust, chances are a PS5 or Series X owner wouldn't be willing to trade with you.
A scalper might, on the other hand, of which there are many out there. One group in the UK claims to have landed 3500 PS5s between pre-orders and launch day. That has led to retailers completely running out of the console until further notice. Not ideal on what is typically the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Luckily for some retailers in the US, more stock of the next-gen consoles has arrived, but not much.
Don't get too excited. Today is Black Friday so chances are by the time you read this, everywhere will be sold out of PS5s and Series Xs once again. Those who were desperate enough to guarantee they landed one camped out outside of GameStop locations for more than 24 hours. ABC's Eugene Daniel happened upon some of them, revealing that a few had even brought their mattresses and bedding along with them.
Yes, that does mean some people are so desperate to bag themselves a next-gen console that not only are they willing to sleep on the street, they're doing it on Thanksgiving. Some of the people in those queues will have foregone spending the day eating turkey with their families to up their chances of returning home the following day with a new console.
According to someone in one of the queues, they visited 11 different GameStops, ten of which had even longer queues than the one Daniel happened upon during his snack run on Thanksgiving. That GameStop, along with the other ten, will have opened by now, and we just have to hope that all of the brave souls who waited outside for more than 24 hours managed to get one of the few consoles waiting inside. According to Xbox head Phil Spencer, many of us will have to wait until April 2021 for that luxury.