I may never get a PS5 and that’s fine

The gift season is over. Gifts have been opened with reckless abandon, parents have searched the living room for all traces of wrapping paper. The socks are empty, the boxes are in the recycling bin. There are only a few days until the new year, for the cycle to restart. One thing that has remained consistent throughout this holiday season is the inability to get a next-gen gaming console, specifically the Sony PlayStation 5.

While Kevin You somehow got a PS5, as it continues to dominate the secondary market over Microsoft Xbox Series X, most of us just hope there will be a lucky restocking before the end of the year. It seems like no matter how many browser updates the bots get the units first. PS5 units go beyond retail, if we want one, we’ll have to bow to resellers. There just aren’t enough consoles for everyone.

This is not news. A pandemic be mess with the supply chain. There was no way Sony or Microsoft could delay the launch to adapt. Regardless, this was the year that many of us were going to make the switch from Xbox to PlayStation. There is no real explanation for this from my point of view, this was the year I told myself that it was time to switch to a PlayStation from having nothing but an Xbox console from scratch. A PlayStation console has never arrived at my house. That was going to change.

Now it is not. Resellers have made it nearly impossible. While we might succumb to higher prices to get a PlayStation before April, I tend to emphasize patience. Eventually supply will catch up with demand, and now with Cyberpunk 2077 Being a disaster, the hope that it will be ported to next-gen consoles has vanished into nothingness. The lack of next-gen games seems to come into focus when the systems themselves aren’t available.

Perhaps this is a more preferable outcome. This has been a difficult year, finances are difficult for many of us. Maybe spending on a new game console is not the best decision. After all, I have an aging Xbox One that is still waiting for me to buy it. FIFA 2020. What’s available on PS5 right now in terms of exclusive launch titles? A couple Spiderman games and a lot of sequels that we can find in other systems? Do we need a PS5 to be able to play another Call of Duty game? Of course, Dirt 5 makes the local splitscreen available for four players thanks to the added processing power, but is that enough to justify buying a next-gen console at after-market prices?

This is all just rationalization. Being a casual gamer (and not a hardcore gaming critic means I can basically get on with my day without putting more emphasis than the words on this page. While the lack of supply is annoying, any other year would be absolutely unacceptable. But pandemic) Supply chain issues are no joke. Therefore, our best resource is once again patience. We don’t have to like it, and we hope that our change in gaming sentiment doesn’t change at that point. Specifically, when I walk into Walmart in April and happen to pass a Sony PlayStation 5 screen on my way to shopping for light bulbs, will I buy one or will I shrug and pick up an Xbox Series X instead?

The most likely scenario is that I won’t be buying any that day, choosing to wait until the next holiday season, when I’ve gathered a bunch of gift cards to help with the purchase. By then, the game libraries ready for the next generation will have grown, someone will have fixed Cyberpunk 2077, and the consoles will be $ 100 cheaper. So yes, you may never get a PS5 due to resellers, supply chain issues, and apathy caused by the passage of time, but by the end of next year I will have come to terms with that. Then I’ll just buy one anyway, in spite of my former self. Who am I kidding? I will never depart from the Microsoft gaming ecosystem. God of War be condemned.