What are those 20 watchers thinking? (eBay)
Pre-orders for the PlayStation 30th Anniversary Collection, including the special edition grey PS5 Pro, has been exactly the sort of disaster you would’ve expected.
It wasn’t mentioned much in the State Of Play earlier this week but it’s the 30th anniversary of PlayStation in December and there are a number of special items and consoles being released to celebrate.
Sony probably didn’t want to mention them much in the State of Play because they are very expensive, with their final prices only being confirmed now, as pre-orders open.
They did already warn that they’d all be available only in limited numbers though, especially the PS5 Pro bundle, which seems to have sold out in just minutes… and seemingly mostly to scalpers.
It took us over an hour to get into the automated queue for the PlayStation Direct website, but these are the prices that are revealed once you finally get there – prices that Sony was pretty keen you don’t see till the last minute.
The five items you can (or rather could) buy are as follows and all of them are only available from PlayStation Direct, with the exception of the 30th anniversary DualSense controller, which is supposed to be available on Amazon but is currently listed as ‘unavailable’.
PS5 30th Anniversary Collection UK prices
PlayStation 5 Pro Console – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition BundIe – £959.99
PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Bundle – £433.99
PlayStation Portal Remote Player – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition – £209.99
DualSense Edge Wireless Controller – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition – £219.99
DualSense Wireless Controller – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition – £69.99
Despite being the most expensive it seems as if the PS5 Pro bundle was the first to sell out. Only 12,300 are being released for the entire world, so it’s uncertain how many were available in the UK, but clearly not many.
You know what that means though: scalpers have probably bought most of them and are immediately going to start selling them at exorbitant prices… which is exactly what’s happen.
As of right now – only an hour after the consoles first went live on PlayStation Direct – there are listings for the consoles for upwards of £8,000 on eBay.
Obviously, the people selling these don’t have the consoles in hand, as they haven’t been released yet, they’re just trying to sell their pre-order details.
The PS5 Slim bundle, which there should have been more of, also seems to have sold out and that’s also already turning up on eBay, for up to £1,600.
All of this is completely predictable and yet it’s not clear that Sony has made any attempt to prevent scalpers, even though the situation is similar to when the original PlayStation 5 launched in 2020 and stock was limited.
It’s possible Sony could ask eBay to remove the listings but they’re still up at the moment and are certain to return when the 30th anniversary hardware is released on November 21.
Some grey paint would be a lot cheaper …read more
Source:: Metro