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PS5
I don’t always report hyper-inflated prices for video game hardware on eBay, mainly because it can be a mirage – just because people are asking for incredible prices doesn’t mean someone is actually paying those prices. Sometimes though, the resale market gets it right, and that’s often the case with new console releases. Resellers have apparently been getting a sizable stock of the new machines, and are actually selling them at hefty prices on eBay.
The PS5, as what appears to be the most popular console, seems to be able to fetch the most consistently high prices here. If you go to eBay, you can see consoles selling for up to $ 1,999, four times the actual asking price. I hope, very expensive, those prices are paid by people for whom that is a trivial sum of money, because it really is not worth getting one of these things right now for such a colossal margin – for that price you could build a solid PC yourself and powerful, for example. And anyway, you will be able to get a PS5 at MSRP, at some point. Just not right away.
I see lower prices and less actual sales for Xbox Series X, although there are bargain listings that are raising the price close to $ 1,000, which again is too much to pay for one of these things. Even the lower-cost Xbox Series S sells above the MSRP of an X Series, which is a strange investment of the entire purpose of the console, which is to cost less money.
People are also selling a lot of state-of-the-art hardware online, and it’s not really the worst time to buy a discounted PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. They are still great consoles that work in many games, and will be relevant to you for at least a year, maybe longer!
I have a feeling that COVID-19 is driving some of this behavior, for two reasons. For one thing, video games are a popular blocking activity, and demand is generally higher than we might expect in a “normal” year, even if that’s a tricky metric with the rare event of a console launch. On the other hand, that means stores are downplaying or eliminating in-store units, and resellers are thriving on the internet, where they can deploy bots to grab stock as soon as it’s available. It is not to say that such measures are not responsible or necessary, just that this is an unfortunate side effect.
Judging by this demand, I don’t expect supply to stabilize at all this year, especially for the PS5. Glad I got mine, because these things are a hot ticket.
