Saturday Morning Gaming: Still Looking for a PS5
The PS5 *STILL* cannot stay in stock. It goes to Amazon or Best Buy or Walmart or something and, yep, it gets sold out in seconds. Even still!
There are a couple of websites that are purportedly pretty good at the whole “when is (location) going to get a restock?” thing but they’re hit and miss and, anyway, those places still sell out in seconds rather than in hours. (If you want to look at the sites yourself, check out Tom’s Guide and Cnet.)
The brag is that the PS5 is the best-selling console in history and, yeah, I guess I’d be willing to believe that but part of me thinks “but nobody is selling them!”
I understood the Christmas rush and I understood the immediate post-Christmas rush. It’s now April and, STILL, you can’t get a PS5 anywhere. Which, seriously, is nuts. I suppose I understand the inability of anybody to get the high-end video cards due to all of the coin miners out there. If a video card costs less than the money it can earn someone positioned properly, why wouldn’t the earner be able to outbid the hobbyist?
But the PS5 (and, I suppose, the XBox Series X) aren’t mining tools. I guess that they’re merely game consoles being sold in the middle of a pandemic where everybody is, more or less, asked to stay at home. So, I understand the off-the charts demand, I just don’t understand the absolute inability to keep up with it. That said… well, I remember that it was a year between the release of the PS2 and when Gamestop *FINALLY* had one for sale. The PS5 was released in November 2020.
So it’s only been six months.
BUT STILL!
Stores are trying to thwart scalpers by selling bundles of the PS5 with an extra controller or a game or two and I’ve heard more stories about non-scalpers getting their hands on a bundle than I’ve heard about non-scalpers getting their hands on a base system. On top of that, the stories I hear about people buying from scalpers involve paying an extra $200 instead of paying an extra $500 so, maybe, we’re dancing a little bit closer to just going into Target and getting one.
Until we find out that you can use one to mine coins.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is “The Scalpers Are Cheating The (Vancouver Folk Music) Festival” by sillygwailo is licensed under CC BY 2.0)
Oh, and the three free games on Epic Store this week are surprisingly good (if awesome games that came out a while back)
Tales of Deponia
Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth
The First Tree
Surprisingly strong offerings! All at the same time! For Free!Report
The issue isn’t really the miners or with Sony or Microsoft. The issue is a shortage of important chips across the entire electronics industry, including those used to build the graphics cards and consoles. The miners just exacerbate the problem by increasing the demand for an already scarce resource.
Sony and Microsoft depend on AMD CPU and graphics chips. But AMD only designs their chips; it doesn’t build them. Instead AMD outsources production to TSMC, a Taiwanese fabrication house. Similarly Nvidia outsources its chip production to TSMC, along with Qualcomm and Apple. On top of that, TSMC builds chips used in 5g mobile phones and automotive electronics.
So all this demand is being funneled through TSMC and a few other other fabrication houses, and their capacity isn’t enough for the current burst of demand. Increasing fabrication capacity can’t be done quickly: a new fab line can take several years and billions of dollars (This is why companies like AMD changed to outsourcing in the first place) And fabrication facilities would much rather investing in creating next generation fab lines rather investing billions in the previous (and soon to be obsolete) generation. So the current backlog will be have be serviced through existing lines and isn’t expected to resolved until 2022
A good article on this is https://www.choresearch.com/2021/03/30/xbox-series-x-and-ps5-slower-sales-driven-by-chip-shortage/Report
Ugh. That sucks.Report
The big auto makers are cutting production sharply because of a shortage of chips. The Texas weather unpleasantness shut down two important fab lines, and a fire in Japan has taken out a third. Estimates are that global revenue for new cars in 2021 will be down by about $60B as a result.
Edit to add: Even the leading edge of the automotive chips are well back from the fab technology producing for the game consoles.Report
there was a news story here that allegedly a guy FINALLY found a PS5 on mail order, and it arrived, only to be porch-pirated.
I dunno, that would doubly hurt: the theft, but also that it’s an incredibly hard-to-find thing. (The guy got a refund – I was surprised, I figured any seller would kinda shrug and go “not our problem, man, take it up with your homeowner’s insurance”)Report
Oh, that’s the worst!
(I’ve heard a lot more success stories from acquaintances who went to Target or Best Buy in person than people who have ordered it online.)Report
2nd Shot Review:
12 Noon: GOT MY SHOT! HURRAY! HURRAY!
2PM: Okay. My head is too big. Let’s sit in the basement.
5PM: I have Executive Function Problems. Good thing I’m playing video games!
8PM: My arm hurts. Dang. Seriously. My arm hurts. Ouch. I’d do something if I had any gas in my tank.Report
I got the second Skelly statue. I will not be getting the third.Report