Pre-orders for the limited edition PlayStation 5 30th Anniversary range will come with an extra layer of scalper protection in Japan, Sony has said, following the rampant relisting of consoles with exorbitant prices on eBay seen elsewhere.
Japanese PlayStation fans can now place pre-orders for the 30th Anniversary collection but require a PlayStation Network account with at least 30 hours’ worth of play to be eligible. This is different to the method elsewhere, where any PSN account could be used.
In Japan, fans have far longer to register a pre-order – from now until midnight on Monday 14th October – to reduce queuing issues.
After that time, all eligible pre-orders will be placed into a lottery system to give every potential customer a fair chance (if the number of pre-orders ends up exceeding the amount of stock, which is of course inevitable).
Any stock not bought by lottery winners will then be entered into a “re-lottery” in late November, with unsuccessful pre-order customers from the first round given another shot.
It all seems a far fairer and more straightforward system than the one used in the UK and US, where customers saw consoles sold out in seconds – if they could get through the wobbly queuing process at all.
Another check of eBay listings here in the UK today shows dozens of recently-sold PS5 30th Edition console pre-orders that have changed hands, the vast majority in the low thousands of pounds – a markup by scalpers of around double to quadruple the console’s original price.