With the PlayStation Portal, Sony has introduced a new gadget for the PS5. But the testers are not very enthusiastic. But that doesn’t stop scalpers from buying the device everywhere and reselling it at a high price.
With the PlayStation Portal, Sony has introduced a new device for the PS5. However, the most important feature is also the biggest weak point: With the PlayStation Portal you can only stream your games from a PS5 and that requires a good internet connection and your own PS5.
Many testers explained that the device was too limited: the rather weak battery life and, above all, the strong restriction to a pure streaming device would speak against the model.
Sony shows the new PlayStation Portal in the trailer
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Scalpers are selling PlayStation Portal for twice the price
What exactly do scalpers do? Now some users have probably come up with the idea of buying the new gadget everywhere in order to then resell it at a significantly higher price. Eurogamer reports that you can now buy the part on eBay for more than 300 British pounds. That’s the equivalent of 350 euros.
For comparison: The recommended retail price for the PlayStation Portal in Germany is 219 euros, around 100 euros lower.
This greedy behavior may sound familiar to some of us. When the PS5 was released, the console was almost unavailable anywhere, so scalpers bought the few devices available in order to resell them at a high price. Still, it’s surprising that these people chose this exact model.
Why is this action surprising? Scalpers like to pounce on products that are only available in limited quantities in order to buy them up and then resell them at hefty surcharges. But the PlayStation Portal is a pure streaming device, which serves a niche anyway and is therefore only likely to play a minor role in Germany.
That’s why it may seem surprising to many that scalpers are now jumping on the PlayStation Portal and want to sell it on eBay for completely exorbitant prices. Because without a PS5 the “Portal” is unusable anyway. Perhaps for many scalpers it is enough that “PlayStation” is in the product name.
What does the situation currently look like? Graphics cards and PS5 consoles are now readily available everywhere, so you no longer have to pay the high scalper prices. This leads to major problems for scalpers who suddenly can no longer get rid of the devices they have purchased and are prepared to resort to desperate measures:
Players say: Scalpers are desperately trying to sell PS5 consoles – they’re stuck with them because no one wants to buy them anymore