2020 has not been the greatest year by any stretch of the imagination. We’re dealing with a worldwide pandemic outbreak, the likes of which none of us has personally seen before. Schools were shut down, classes transitioned to online, and jobs that could be tackled remotely were transitioning employees at their homes. This for some may be more ideal than others, but we’re all doing something different that we were not doing before.
You can’t go outside and gather without masks and you certainly can’t go inside and publicly gather. It’s a waiting game to see if the vaccines work and this virus gets taken out. Of course, we’re going into 2021 and it may very well be a similar situation. With that said, there is starvation for entertainment, and before 2020 hit we knew that both Sony and Microsoft had planned to bring out their next-generation video game console platforms this year. Despite the virus outbreaks, riots, national emergencies, murder hornets, you name it, both companies managed to get their consoles out into the market within November.
The problem we’re having with these new consoles is that we just can’t get our hands on them. Consumers are having a ridiculously tough time finding a unit to purchase. There’s a lot that can go into the scarcity of these consoles as well. Again, we’re in a pandemic so there’s a lot of free time for quite a few people at home that would take up with gaming if they haven’t already. We also have the holiday season which means several of these units are likely to be holiday gifts. However, the biggest issue may be resellers.
Resellers are flocking online to pick up any and all stock of these next-generation consoles. Through the use of bots, resellers are able to gather console units up right away which leaves nothing left for the average consumer. Unfortunately, this is legal and it’s leaving consumers with a ghost hunt, hoping to find a unit available but eventually coming up short. As a result, some are having to wait out and hope that stock starts to settle a bit or pay a large upfront premium fee from a reseller.
It looks like a new report is going around that Walmart is transitioning all of their next-generation console sales online. This means that whatever is left in-store or is in route to be restocked, might be the last consoles available within the retailer locations. This is not confirmed yet, but we very well may make things tougher for some consumers.
