Are PS5 / Xbox Series the most botched console launches ever?

[Popo]

26 minutes ago, cubik said:

people with a lot of time on their hands who could sit and press F5 to get hold of one etc.

Thats not a fair description of how the scalpers operated. They used bots to buy up stock, without exaggeration, the second it goes live on the website.

 

Christmas shopping: Why bots will beat you to in-demand gifts https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55074383
 

It was a very slick, well organised operation - one amplified by lockdown, where in-store shopping wasn’t possible, or was severely curtailed. 

[mikeyl]

11 minutes ago, Keyboard Koala said:

 

Not sure if serious really.

 

Scalpers are becoming an absolute pest imo. They now seem to have discovered the market of games magazines as well it seems, buying up magazines in bulk so no-one else gets them but for three, four even five times the original asking price. I think most scalpers are scum preventing regular customers to enjoy their hobby. There's no two ways about it really.

I’m serious, if you really wanted an Xbox or ps5, you would’ve have been all over many of the pre-release opportunities. I thought the short pre order window actually helped. I managed to get both an Xbox and ps5 for release day (and a second ps5 I flipped for cost) because I took it semi seriously (sitting on the shitter having an Amazon link sent to me), anyone in here (not the general public) were just too causal or driven by FOMO.
 

Trust me, I hate resellers, spend my life begging around for fancy trainers, getting the new consoles was a breeze in comparison 

[Popo]

That was your experience @mikeyl, not other people's.  I got a Series X - on All Access, which is statistically unlikely - and didn't have any problems, but many others weren't as lucky.

[Keyboard Koala]

6 minutes ago, mikeyl said:

I’m serious, if you really wanted an Xbox or ps5, you would’ve have been all over many of the pre-release opportunities. I thought the short pre order window actually helped. I managed to get both an Xbox and ps5 for release day (and a second ps5 I flipped for cost) because I took it semi seriously (sitting on the shitter having an Amazon link sent to me), anyone in here (not the general public) were just too causal or driven by FOMO.
 

Trust me, I hate resellers, spend my life begging around for fancy trainers, getting the new consoles was a breeze in comparison 

 

Ahh, sorry, I misinterpreted. I assumed you were defending scalpers in general not just for the consoles launch. I don't really know how hard it was to get a PS5 on launch - I stopped buying consoles on launch after the 3DS fiasco - but generally speaking I think scalpers are becoming more reprehensible as time moves on. The magazines scam being one of the most recent. Trying to get a hold of From soft limited editions is another example.

[mikeyl]

Fair, ok. But did anyone here, who really really wanted a console when they announced them, not get a console?

 

edit @Popo

[Stanley]

9 minutes ago, Majora said:

It was incredibly difficult to get a Wii for months after launch. The Switch was hard to get for a good few months if you hadn't pre-ordered too, I think some people have selective memories about how easy it was to get some previous consoles unless you'd pre-ordered. Admittedly the main difference this time is that actually getting the preorder in was incredibly difficult compared to my previous experiences. Getting in a preorder for a Switch and PS4 was a breeze in comparison.

 

Can't help but wonder what a Switch 2 launch might look like now that the original is a bona fide success. At least part of the reason it was so easy to get a preorder in must have been because they were coming off the Wii U. Now they're coming off a hit and everyone has seen how much money there is to be made scalping consoles, I wonder if this will just be the norm for future launches.

The normal Switch was hard enough to get hold of until more recently - particularly when the pandemic hit and Animal Crossing came out, bit fir some time after that too.

[mikeyl]

2 minutes ago, Keyboard Koala said:

 

Ahh, sorry, I misinterpreted. I assumed you were defending scalpers in general not just for the consoles launch. I don't really know how hard it was to get a PS5 on launch - I stopped buying consoles on launch after the 3DS fiasco - but generally speaking I think scalpers are becoming more reprehensible as time moves on. The magazines scam being one of the most recent. Getting From soft limited editions is another example.

agree! Resellers will jump on anything in high demand. It’s pathetic, the margins of profit them make on some of their nonsense can surely not be worth the admin.  Whisky scalping is my current fury.

[Down by Law]

Golden rule of console launches : preorder the moment they become available, giving you time to cancel in the weeks leading up.to launch. If you flip flop thinking it over you aren't going to get one. It's been this way since Xbox 360. Premium systems were fetching a grand on eBay back then too, all this is nothing new. Even sort after accessories like Wii Fit were the same. Game charging a £150 bundle with a yoga mat, silicon cover and rechargeable battery. 

 

[cubik]

11 minutes ago, mikeyl said:

agree! Resellers will jump on anything in high demand. It’s pathetic, the margins of profit them make on some of their nonsense can surely not be worth the admin.  Whisky scalping is my current fury.

The margins they made on PS5s especially were crazy. They were selling for 800/900 on Gumtree etc. Even the easiest option (CEX) made them £200 with no hassle.

 

Records attracts scalpers and is the one that really pisses me off, limited or desirable releases in general. Obviously Record Store Day is the big name example that they are really attracted to. You'll see the same faces in twitter feeds year after year and some are well known for buying handfuls and getting them straight on eBay when they get home.

 

At least with consoles, they'll eventually make more and you'll eventually be able to buy one at RRP.

A lot of vinyl is a one shot deal these days, I assume whiskies are the same.

[teddymeow]

5 hours ago, dumpster said:

They are hard to get because Sony didn't make enough 

 

Didn't or couldn't?

[mikeyl]

19 minutes ago, cubik said:

The margins they made on PS5s especially were crazy. They were selling for 800/900 on Gumtree etc. Even the easiest option (CEX) made them £200 with no hassle.

 

Records attracts scalpers and is the one that really pisses me off, limited or desirable releases in general. Obviously Record Store Day is the big name example that they are really attracted to. You'll see the same faces in twitter feeds year after year and some are well known for buying handfuls and getting them straight on eBay when they get home.

 

At least with consoles, they'll eventually make more and you'll eventually be able to buy one at RRP.

A lot of vinyl is a one shot deal these days, I assume whiskies are the same.

Yeah major beef with limited items that you want them to make more to meet demand. But if they made more then they wouldn’t be as desirable anymore. With consoles it’s completely different, if you really really wanted one you would’ve got one, if you half wanted one, now you have to wait. They’ll make more. Spinning this into some sort of console launch disaster is wild, there’s probably some sort of threshold where the makers are happy to not quite fully meet demand as it keeps the desirability factor up.

[dumpster]

11 minutes ago, teddymeow said:

 

Didn't or couldn't?

Does it matter? The point is they shouldn't have launched until they had the stock. Delay it a couple of months and launch when you have stock to sell. Makes sense to me.

[rgraves]

5 hours ago, bear said:

Since Microsoft entered the console space I don't think anything from the three main players has had as poor a launch as the Wii-U. There have been plenty of issues with other console launches but that thing launched like a pebble being thrown into a lake. Barely noticeable splash and then forgotten about.

[mikeyl]

 

4 minutes ago, dumpster said:

Does it matter? The point is they shouldn't have launched until they had the stock. Delay it a couple of months and launch when you have stock to sell. Makes sense to me.

I guess just in time production doesn’t work in such a way. Where would they store the millions and millions of stockpiled consoles? Even then they’d all be hoovered up on release.

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, rgraves said:

That’s in Japan though yeah? The rest of the world has sold better I believe. 

[Gigawatt]

3 hours ago, mikeyl said:

Fair, ok. But did anyone here, who really really wanted a console when they announced them, not get a console?

 

edit @Popo

I really really wanted a PS5 and haven’t been able to find one, despite being ready at every supposed drop of stock checking every website I could. You can’t tell me that their pre-order process was anything other than a shambles. How hard would it have been for every shop that was getting some to have a list of people to sell it to rather than selling them all to the bots. I’m not paying scalper prices. 

[MNFRMTMRRW]

4 hours ago, Dudley said:

Then you don't remember the Nintendo Wii, that was months like that.

PS4 as well. 

[cubik]

I was lucky I got mine, ordered on Currys on launch day at just after 6 in the morning using a glitch from HUKD.

 

Once I got to work I read that people were being told by Currys that their glitch orders weren't valid and I spent half my working day trying to get one from other retailers just in case. No chance whatsoever as one by one, most of the major retailer's websites died as they put them on sale. Amazon's site stayed up but the stock went in the blink of an eye due to bots (as per the link from @Popo)

 

Following that, over the next couple of weeks the Currys orders turned into a mix of lucky ones who got them and unlucky ones who got cancelled, seemingly at random.

 

The average person without a pre-order had no chance, it was purely down to luck on launch day.

 

The argument that anyone who didn't get one didn't try hard enough is completely wrong. You could claim that anyone serious would have sourced one well before when pre-orders went live but lots of people don't pre-order, it doesn't mean they aren't serious about gaming.

Also, at the point of pre-orders we'd been in a lockdown for months and loads of people had no idea if their employers would even re-open after furlough. At that moment a console may not have been top of their list of things to spend money on.

 

One thing that I can say for sure is that it's not a launch for anyone to be proud of. Sony didn't handle it well, shipping companies had widely reported thefts, a lot of retailers struggled with selling it (websites going down, and my experience with Currys was basically two weeks of not knowing what was going on and them not being able to tell me).

 

Also, it definitely brought out the worst in some people.

By that I don't just mean scalpers, without buyers they don't have a market to sell to. Anyone desperate enough to pay massively over the odds for a gadget that will be everywhere in a few months is crazy.

[MNFRMTMRRW]

3 hours ago, Majora said:

 

It was incredibly difficult to get a Wii for months after launch. The Switch was hard to get for a good few months if you hadn't pre-ordered too, I think some people have selective memories about how easy it was to get some previous consoles unless you'd pre-ordered. Admittedly the main difference this time is that actually getting the preorder in was incredibly difficult compared to my previous experiences. Getting in a preorder for a Switch and PS4 was a breeze in comparison.

 

People are just generally not business savvy. 
 

You can’t just switch on and off production capacity. You have to book production lines in advance and those on 7nm are on incredible high demand (see AMD, Nvidia, Sony and Microsoft shortages). 
 

So Microsoft and Sony could have booked like 5 million a month production capacity in the first 3 months (but likely not available), but then a month or two after launch their warehouses would be filled to the brim with consoles they can only sell much later. 
 

if their is a hardware issue, it also means you have to do 5-10 million recalls instead of 1 million. Furthermore, due to the pandemic both software and games were ready late so they didn’t have proper system sellers to begin with. And no, Demon Souls is not a system seller no matter how you spin it. Gran Turismo or Halo Infinite are and both are not ready. 
 

So the current situation makes a lot of sense and has nothing to do with Microsoft and Sony screwing up or underestimating. They know exactly what they are doing just like AMD and Nvidia. They are managing risk and cost and are doing careful strategic product planning. Nintendo is also very good at that and basically structurally produces only 60-80% of what they could sell. Switch Pro won’t be any different. 
 

Also Nintendo and Sony are selling last-gen consoles at launch prices in good quantities. They are laughing in your face. The cost of production has probably gone down like 100% so margins went up a lot. 

[SeanR]

"... won't someone think of the corporations!?!"

[dumpster]

I don't understand bots, but what's to stop any of us getting a ps5 by using a bot? Can I make a bot myself?

[Calashnikov]

1 hour ago, MNFRMTMRRW said:

And no, Demon Souls is not a system seller no matter how you spin it.

It sold me mine 

[Mike S]

1 hour ago, MNFRMTMRRW said:

And no, Demon Souls is not a system seller no matter how you spin it.

 

It was for me. 
 

 

[Steve McQueef]

Nope, getting a PS5 was a breeze, compared to the Xbox 360 shenanigans. 

 

I didn't have to phone or drive to a single store, in the vain hope of there being stock. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

High demand doesn't mean they botched it, unless you mean that their marketing department did their jobs too well. The demand was and is so high, that they were always going to sell out no matter how much stock they were able to supply. And you can't expect them to spend a year stockpiling them, as there's nowhere to put them for that long - products got to move at some point instead of taking up space forever without selling.

 

I'm a bit disappointed that my PS5 is so noisy, but that's also on journos claiming it was silent before launch. Other than that you can't compare the few hardware issues with something like the RRoD of the 360 or the PS4 sticks literally disintegrating or even the Switch right joycon failing en masse.

 

PS5 launched with a bunch of awesome and impressive exclusives. The Series launched without one standout system seller, but the transition from the old to the new console is the most impressive I've ever seen: sign in and your customized dash is there, all your old saves going back multiple generations are just magically there, and your old games look like they've been remastered - in terms of actual good stuff to play the Series has a shitload more than any new console I've ever bought on day one before, my backlog ludicrous.

 

For those last few reasons this console launch is imo one of the best ever. Sure, neither console has a single equivalent to for example Mario World or Mario 64, but on the whole it's been awesome. And thanks to the way BC now works through online syncing and visual/performance enhancements, it's been one of the most enjoyable launches overall. Used to be that I finished the one or two must-play launch titles followed by a big gap of playing below average shite until something else worthwhile showed up - now I have no shortage of awesome stuff. It's almost too much even!

 

[Dirty Harry Potter]

Simultaneous world wide console launches are always like this. There are usually shortages for months for any console worth the wait.

 

Frankly I’m amazed either launched atall during COVID. That must have been a monumental challenge to overcome.

 

I do have to say (as an owner of both the PS5 and series X) that MS’s launch does seem alot more botched as it must have been the first time ever to launch, with no demonstrable difference between your new platform and the one it’s replacing. Very weird, but properly couldn’t be helped during COVID. PS5’s was much more satisfying as an owner. 

 

 

[therearerules]

They clearly weren't the most botched ever, but I also found Series S easy to get. For some reason people are treating that as not counting, but it was and has been available without having to set up stock alerts. You could preorder it weeks after it went up.

[MNFRMTMRRW]

24 minutes ago, Dirty Harry Potter said:

Simultaneous world wide console launches are always like this. There are usually shortages for months for any console worth the wait.

 

Frankly I’m amazed either launched atall during COVID. That must have been a monumental challenge to overcome.

 

I do have to say (as an owner of both the PS5 and series X) that MS’s launch does seem alot more botched as it must have been the first time ever to launch, with no demonstrable difference between your new platform and the one it’s replacing. Very weird, but properly couldn’t be helped during COVID. PS5’s was much more satisfying as an owner. 

 

 

That is by design and not botched. When will people get this? You prefer save games not transferring, PS VR being severely handicapped and your old controllers not working over that? I certainly don’t. 
 

And I know many others don’t mind either. Some see the future and others don’t. Apple and Google have shown (mostly) how ecosystems and platforms should work. As has PC. Progressive enhancement is the way forward. But a vocal minority keeps shitting on this strategy because they fail to understand it. Of course it’s a shame Halo Infinite wasn’t ready but delaying your console launch over that would be stupid. Also Sony could have a great first party lineup and have all those things. I would have bought a PS5 instead most likely. 
 

People complain about Xbox exclusives but I have more to play at launch then ever before, and Game Pass is insane value. So IMO, Microsoft respects their 1st party games and legacy a lot better while arguably Sony has more breadth and depth. But all those diamonds are stuck in PS4 emulation or locked behind a future paid remaster. Not to even start about the atrocity that is not being able to play PSX games on PS5, and to an extend PS2 and PS3 games. All those gems lost forever because of Sony’s “praised” business model of clear generation cuts.
 

But hey, I am back to playing Panzer Dragoon Orta and Fuzion Frenzy in 4K with HDR. Talk later

[Down by Law]

1 hour ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

 

I'm a bit disappointed that my PS5 is so noisy

 

 

I know this sounds daft but give the fins a bit of a squeeze. Mine suddenly made a really loud vibrating sort of sound while watching a film and as I grabbed it to inspect , that pressure on the fins stopped it. May be the plates shaking loose? Either way it's super quiet again now. 

[MNFRMTMRRW]

4 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

 

I know this sounds daft but give the fins a bit of a squeeze. Mine suddenly made a really loud vibrating sort of sound while watching a film and as I grabbed it to inspect , that pressure on the fins stopped it. May be the plates shaking loose? Either way it's super quiet again now. 

That’s what I do when my wife makes noise.