If the year 2022 is shaping up to be a fairly good vintage for home consoles, the PS5 is still extremely difficult to obtain. We help you find it by offering you our live restocking follow-up and all our buying advice.
[Mis à jour le 24 août 2022 à 14h31] Buying a game console has been over since 2020 for everyone. Blame it on a global shortage of semiconductors which is hitting the electronics market hard, and on the strong popularity of the latest generation of consoles. For buyers, this situation has resulted for a little over eighteen months in an intense hunt for the Playstation 5. It is necessary to be on the lookout for the slightest restocking at Franco-European retailers, and above all to react quickly in the event of re-sale of the console. If you’re looking to pick up the PS5, are looking to find it, and be efficient with your purchase, here are our top tips and live console inventory tracker.
OUR WEDNESDAY AUGUST 23 LIVE PS5 STOCK TRACKING
- 10:30 a.m.: To register for the next PS5 private sale at Sony, meet here.
- 10:15 a.m.: The console is available second-hand and at a high price at Rakuten.
As for second-hand consoles, you will always have the opportunity to find Playstation 5s for resale. New or second-hand, Sony’s console has a real value well above its base price, and resellers have understood this. Although the Playstation 5 has seen its resale price drop by several hundred euros in recent months, it remains very high, despite some interesting offers on the Rakuten site. A purchase that remains reserved for the most motivated players and who wish to avoid the waltz of drops and purchases at full speed. Just keep in mind that the Playstation 5 Digital is €399 and the Standard is €499.
For 18 months buyers have been struggling to get a Playstation 5. The new game console is in high demand, and e-commerce sites feel it during the rare restocking and new stocks. Indeed, the crowd is great on the latter while some pages collapse completely in long queues. Speed is the key word of this new “sport” of which there are certain rules that can greatly benefit you. Indeed, each site has its own operation, and this slide contains a few tricks that can help you make your purchase as quickly as possible.
As you will have understood, the Playstation 5 is part of a generation of consoles released directly out of stock. Remember, when Sony’s last console was released, it was November 2020, and the coronavirus pandemic was reaching peak levels, paralyzing the economy around the world. Southeast Asia, the leading producer of semiconductor metals used in the manufacture of smart cards (ie processors and graphics processors for consoles and PCs) has been hard hit, slowing the production of consoles, graphics cards and even cars all over the world. A factor that is still felt today on the high-tech market, and particularly on that of the latest generation game consoles.
As for Playstations 5, and more generally graphics processors, the situation should not return to normal before 2024. A prediction made by Pat Gelsinger, the President and CEO of Intel, who affirms in an interview with CNBC that the production of microchips should return to its full potential by the end of 2023. A precise expertise but a bad omen for console and PC gamers who expected to be able to enjoy a stable situation by now the end of the year 2022.