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If you were hoping to reserve a PlayStation 5 or RTX 3080 this week, you probably stayed on the … [+]
If you were hoping to get a shiny new graphics card or a next-gen console this week, chances are you’ve been disappointed.
Nvidia opened pre-orders for the new RTX 3080 on Thursday and the graphics card, which outperforms the top RTX 20XX series despite its mid-range price tag, sold out instantly.
Online retailer Newegg said it experienced heavier traffic than Black Friday and the limited offer was sold out in five minutes. The retailer also claimed that the orders were all human rather than bot:
But bots played a big role in the shortage. As PCMag reported, resellers used bots to grab dozens and dozens of RTX 3080s each. These cards are now for sale on eBay for hundreds or thousands of dollars more than the MSRP.
“To stop bots and resellers in the Nvidia store,” Nvidia said in a statement, “we are doing everything humanly possible, including manual order review, to get these cards into the hands of legitimate customers.”
“More than 50 major global retailers had inventory as of 6 am PT. Our team and partners at Nvidia are shipping more RTX 3080 cards to retailers every day.
“We apologize to our customers for the experience this morning.”
The bot software is sold as a subscription service to resellers, who then join “cook groups” on Discord to help coordinate the procurement of high-demand items. This practice largely started with sneakers, but has become increasingly common with video games and hardware, including the Nintendo Switch and games that require devices like Ring Fit Adventure.
PlayStation 5 reserve mayhem
Sony fans encountered a strikingly similar problem when pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 were suddenly released a day ahead of schedule.
Sony released the price tag for the PS5 on Wednesday, saying pre-orders will launch “as soon as tomorrow.” And then retailers suddenly opened pre-orders without any immediate warning.
I was playing Crusader Kings III on my PC when the PS5 pre-orders were released and completely lost. By the time I clicked on the GameStop, Best Buy, and Target booking links, it was too late. I managed to add a PS5 to my cart at both GameStop and Best Buy, but neither site would let me verify. This is life.
He was far from alone in this. Once again, the resellers and limited supply conspired against consumers, as did the sudden and anticipated opening of the floodgates. Microsoft was quick to cast a shadow over Sony:
Still, even with an exact date and time for Xbox Series X and Series S pre-orders, resellers and their bots could make things difficult for legitimate consumers without further efforts to ensure humans are the only ones buying the consoles. next generation. . (In truth, now we are at war with bots, basically Terminator or Western world in real life!)
Now RTX 3080 cards and PS5 consoles are being resold on eBay for ridiculous amounts of money and we, dear readers, must not capitulate. Resellers wouldn’t be in this business if people like you and I didn’t buy from them. As with the Nintendo Switch unit shortage, the best way to respond to this nonsense is not to open your wallet and be patient. At the very least, resellers would be forced to sell for MSRP or be stuck with a bunch of expensive hardware that they can’t download instead of making big bucks doing literally nothing.
Hopefully Sony and Nvidia and the respective retailers selling these products can go back and find out what orders were placed by bots and cancel them, freeing up supply for normal people at real prices. Retailers like Amazon need to be better at making sure this doesn’t happen in the first place, although Amazon is also a hotbed of price speculators – another issue the company should address rather than turn a blind eye.
A combination of limited supply (at least in part due to manufacturing and supply line issues created by the global coronavirus pandemic), price-pushing bots and resellers, and high demand created the perfect storm for both RTX 3080 and for PlayStation 5. Demand for the RTX 3080 is also higher thanks to crypto-miners who use these cards to mine Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
We’ll keep you posted as more supplies emerge, as we’ll be keeping a close eye on the PS5 series, Xbox Series X / S, and RTX 30XX cards here at Forbes Games. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. Thank you for reading!
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