Judging by how hard it is to get a PS5 these days, it might be worth a years-long commitment to get one. That's what Ford of Spain is betting on with its new promotion.
Due to the popularity of the PlayStation and Xbox brand, it’s not surprising that when the PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles were released there was a rush to buy them. As it would be understandably impossible for Sony and Microsoft to meet this onslaught of demand, naturally this would result in temporary shortages.
These shortages have since been taken advantage of by scalpers who are buying the consoles and reselling them at pretty much a 100% markup (if not more). Now according to data engineer Michael Driscoll from dev.to, he was curious to see how much these scalpers have made and he put together a program that scrapes information from platforms like eBay to get an idea.
While CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the more highly anticipated games of 2020, it seems that for some gamers, especially those on the PS4 and the PS5, the launch was less than ideal. So much so that gamers are now reporting that Sony is apparently issuing refunds for gamers who request for it.
For those who need a little bit more context, the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 on the PS4 and PS5 consoles have been less than stellar. Sure, it’s a new game, but even so, it seems that due to bugs or poor optimization, PS4 gamers are reporting that the game plays at a low 720p resolution, with framerates dropping to 15 fps.
Right now, people or groups who are buying up PS5 consoles and reselling them at a marked up price are a huge problem. From what we’ve noticed, a lot of these scalpers are trying to sell the consoles at almost double the retail price that online retailers are selling the console at, and are netting a pretty decent profit out of it.
That being said, a report from Kotaku has revealed that over in South Korea, one retailer by the name Gamewoori is trying to fight against these scalpers by taking a no-mercy approach and outright cancelling orders if they are found to be bought for the intention of resale. According to the retailer’s Instagram, they claim that if they find any evidence that one of their customers is trying to resell their pre-order at marked up prices, they will cancel their orders, even if payment has already been made (presumably they will refund these orders).
The concept of scalping is buying high demand items and then flipping them for a huge markup. This is based on the extremely high demand for certain items that are either difficult to get or are limited in nature. This is the case for the Sony PS5 in which Sony is struggling to try and meet the demand of the market right now, creating a space for scalpers.
In fact according to a report from Business Insider, they found a PS5 scalper calling himself Mark F who apparently managed to nab himself 221 PS5 consoles. Mark F also sold these scalped units for a whopping $1,000 each, and in the first week of his sales alone, he managed to nab a cool $40,000.
If you are having a tough time getting your hands on Sony’s PS5 console, then you have scalpers to blame. This is because according to a report from Business Insider, it appears that a UK based scalper group calling themselves CrepChiefNotify have managed to nab as many as 3,500 units in total and are reselling them at premium prices.
According to the report, the group relied on a variety of tools to help them nab all these units, including communications over Discord, retail-scalping bots, and also inside information to give them an advantage over regular shoppers. Sony has attempted to combat scalpers by limiting the number of units that customers can purchase per household, but it seems that whatever measures they put into place did not help as it is clear that the group managed to find a way around it.
Valve has announced over the weekend that they’ve added support for the DualSense controller. What this means is that games that support controller input will also support the DualSense, although given that the DualSense wasn’t designed for PC gaming in mind, and PC games weren’t necessarily created around it, you might miss out on certain features that would otherwise be available for the PS5.
However, for the most part it should still be more than capable of playing games, so if you’re just looking for controller support, you’ll have an additional option in the form of the DualSense controller. Right now, Steam supports a multitude of different controllers made by various companies, including the PS4’s controller, the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, and more.
While it is tempting to rush out and get the latest gadget, sometimes it might be better to wait. This is because as much testing and prototyping a company does, it’s hard to predict how a device behaves when it gets put into the hands of thousands of users who are doing all kinds of things with them, some of which might result in unintended consequences.
This seems to be the case with some early PS5 adopters who are reporting a variety of issues with their consoles, such as loud, buzzing sounds, and in some instances of unlucky gamers, their consoles are getting bricked which usually means that they’ll need to send it back to Sony to get it fixed.
Despite Sony’s best attempts, the PS5 was too hyped where initial stocks ran out in a very short amount of time. This means that gamers who failed to secure themselves a unit will have to wait until new units are back in stock, but some people are betting that there are gamers out there who probably can’t wait.
So much so that according to sightings on eBay, it seems that there are some people who are reselling PS5 units for crazy amounts of money, where some are being sold for $2,000. We can’t be sure if all these listings are legit to begin with, and we’re pretty sure that there are bound to be a few scammers who are trying to make a quick buck.
Speaking to The Washington Post in an interview, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Senior Art Director Yujin Morisawa revealed that had the engineering team not tell him, he would have made the console even larger than what it is at the moment. He was quoted as saying, “In the beginning, when I started drawing, it was much larger even though I didn’t know what engineering was going to do. It’s kind of funny that engineering actually told me it’s too big. So, I actually had to shrink it down a little bit from the first drawing.”
The reason why Sony made the PS5 as large as it is, is because of the powerful hardware packed inside of it. According to Morisawa, he knew at the jump that the console had to be even more powerful than its predecessor, and because of all that power, he also knew that it needed even more space to accommodate a larger heatsink and to offer better thermals.
Game streaming is becoming more popular these days, and if you eve, for whatever reason, wanted or need to stream your PS5 games onto your PS4, you’ll be able to do that. This is because according to a report from Eurogamer, it appears that Sony has started rolling out a PlayStation Remote Play app for the PS4.
What this means is that gamers will be able to use their PS4 consoles to stream games from your PS5. This should give you a bit more usage and life out of the PS4. So why would anyone want to do that? For example, if you’re playing a game on your PS4 and you want to play a PS5 game, instead of having to switch consoles, you’ll be able to just stream those games to the PS4 instead.
Back in the early days of the console, there used to be massive gamer envy. This is because companies would release games designed for specific markets, so for example if a game was released for Japan, it would not necessarily be available for the US, and even if you bought the game, you couldn’t play it on your US console.
However, these days region-free games are becoming the norm and in case you were wondering about the PS5, Sony has confirmed on its PlayStation Blog that the PS5’s games will not be locked to any particular region. This means that games released will essentially be playable on any PS5 console.
In a statement made to The Verge, Sony told the publication that storage expansion will come at a later date. Basically what this means is that while the PS5 does have the hardware components it needs to expand on the console’s storage, it would seem that this feature will be disabled at launch and that it will be re-enabled at a later date through a software update.
This was actually revealed by PlayStation hardware architect Mark Cerny, who back in March spoke about the console’s ability to expand on storage through SSDs. Cerny was quoted as saying back then, “It’d be great if that happened by launch, but it’s likely to be a bit past it, so please hold off on getting that M.2 drive until you hear from us.”
This led to opportunities from third-party companies looking to create accessories for the console, like a company calling themselves CustomizeMyPlates. Unfortunately, it seems that the company has since been forced to cancel all orders that were placed through them for custom PS5 faceplates following a legal letter from Sony that threatened a lawsuit should they proceed.
Speaking to VGC in an email, the company said, “Before we launched, we did our due diligence and were of the opinion, that because Sony only had pending patents on the faceplates there would be no problem. But after only a day of our website being live, Sony’s lawyers asked us to change our name (at the time PlateStation5), due to trademark infringements. We thought this switch would be enough to keep everyone happy, and honestly were hoping so since we were already underway with our product development.”