UK gamers and politicians take aim at console 'scalpers'
Furious British gamers and lawmakers are training their sights in "scalpers" who are buying up coveted PS5 and Xbox consoles and selling them on the web at vastly inflated prices.
The popular consoles are also tricky to find in other parts of the world, however in Britain anger has boiled to the point where some lawmakers want to ban the practice of reselling them online at higher prices.
"I've been trying to get a good PS5 for four a few months now, but I can't get one at a normal price tag," said Tracey Ford, a student in Manchester, northwest England.
The 24-year-old gamer has made frequent visits to the store, and registered for alerts when new stocks arrive -- but nothing has worked.
"It's so frustrating", she told AFP.
The reason for her anger is console "scalping", where persons use "bots" to snap up huge levels of stock online faster than regular consumers can, and resell them at sky-high prices.
The practice, which is legal in the UK, is often connected with concert tickets and limited edition footwear.
Nonetheless it has taken on a fresh dimension with the launch of two highly-anticipated consoles by the end of 2020: the Sony PlayStation 5 and the Microsoft Xbox.
While a PS5 normally costs between £360 and £450 ($500/$627) according to the model, its median resale price on sites like eBay is £650-750, according to U.S. researcher Michael Driscoll.
Confronted with an in-retail store shortage, many gamers spend full price, which simply feeds the marketplace further.
Driscoll estimates that around 52,000 copies of both consoles have already been resold in Britain on eBay and StockX for a complete of £42 million, making £10 million in income.
That figure will probably hugely underestimate the challenge as it only considers the "gray market" rather than the black industry, "which is definitely larger", said Driscoll, who's from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
The sudden surge in console scalping has been driven by much more robust demand than usual, with gamers having "extra cash because of be not have the ability to travel" due to coronavirus restrictions, he added.
"Plus you will find a global shortage of high-end silicon used for making good computer chips," he said.
The Nvidia RTX30 graphic card and processors from US chip supplier AMD are also being sold at inflated prices online, but consoles will be the worst hit, according to Driscoll.
Driscoll believes the problem will "eventually stabilize" due to more gamers obtain stock and push down demand.
If the same marketplace circumstances exist in five years when the PlayStation 6 is because of turn out, he warned: "It's going to happen again."
Many gamers are contacting manufacturers to address the problem.
But neither Sony nor Microsoft have spoken away, and declined requests for comment from AFP.
Others express that responsibility lies with the outlets advertising consoles to begin with, such as for example CeX, Currys, PC Environment and Argos.
Argos said that it again has "stringent processes in place" to avoid its shares of PS5 rapidly advertising out.
"As part of this, PlayStation 5's are limited to one per consumer and any duplicate orders happen to be cancelled," said a good spokeswoman.
Nonetheless it is far cry from methods demanded by gamers, who would like websites to use a "Captcha" test, which asks users to complete an activity that robots cannot perform.
Different scalpers contacted by AFP declined to comment.
A group of Uk MPs filed a expenses in mid-December to ban the "unfair" practice.
People are "very angry", said Douglas Chapman, a good Scottish National Get together MP who tabled the bill after dozens of cell phone calls from his constituents.
The proposal is still in mind but has little chance of succeeding, according to Chapman, although he hopes it'll "put pressure on the government to do this".
The culture ministry said it had been "discussing this matter with the trade association for the video gaming industry... who we figure out are looking at any more actions" to avoid it happening.
But Daniel Sumner, a good 35-year-old gamer surviving in Plymouth, southwest England, believes a good light financial penalty "certainly won't work" in the face of huge income to be made by scalping.
"I look and feel sorry for a lot of people who job hard to get consoles only to end up struggling to afford them," he said.
Source: japantoday.com
