Scalpers are threatening the profitability and longevity of PS5 | System suffers unusually low attach rate due to scalpers

[dmillos]

wohufana said:

Should both Sony and Microsoft seriously consider March as viable release month for their next gen console so that enough supply is provided in the market and that their early adapters who are considered their most avid consumers will not suffer? Sony and its game developers will benefit a lot too.

vonny said:

Random analyst says x, any affect from scalpers will be short lived. If scalping continues to be a thing it means people are still buying them which means games will be also sold, if scalpers can't sell their stock the scalping will end.

Ka-pi96 said:

That's one possibility.

It's also possible that people are just buying PS4 games instead because there aren't any good PS5 games. Seriously, is there even a single good exclusive?

Jumpinbeans said:

Scalpers hurt consumers not the games companies or hardware resellers.

A scalper exists to make a profit on something. For them to make a profit they have to shift a product. So for every product that is snatched by bots/sneaky people there will be a product being sold. Yes some people will there fore have less to spend on consoles after buying a scalped product but the people that buy from scalpers want to buy it for a specific reason and would (in the case of consoles) have factored this into their purchases. So if they wanted it for cod, there limit would be cod + scalp price.

As for the article, it only references physical and this has been declining. Sony have also shifted to providing a digital only platform with the ps5. Factor in COVID with people not able to go and buy the physical games from game shops and you get the result of fewer physical shipments. Sony also chucked in 15 games to play through the ps+ bundle.

The only thing which can be taken from the article is - Physical sales are down.
My response to that is - yeah, its expected.

 All of these comments make a lot of sense to me. Something seems a little bit off with the article, as it provides concrete number for physical sales but avoids talking about exact digital sales. It's kind of odd to make analysis of consoles sales based on physical software sold, specially when one of the main features of the console is that it is 100% digital. 

But taking that argument aside for a little bit, Scalpers buy consoles in order to sell them, I would assume that hey are being able to sell them right now (but that is a stat that would be interesting to know). Therefore if they resell them, it would be to someone that purchases a game as well. For this reason, software sales are probably still above the 1 per console sold. It is simply the fact that digital sales are so tough to track that this kind of analysis is almost impossible to make.

But to the original argument that scalpers are hurting sony (or any other company), I think that there are two scenarios:

Scenario 1: They are buying them and Reselling them

In this scenario, a console would have been sold anyways, therefore sales would have been the same for hardware. In terms of software or extra accessories I think it might hurt sales because people have a limited amount of money to spend, so paying double  for the console will probably hurt the chances of that same money being spent on software or extras.

Scenario 2: They are buying them and not being able to resell  them.

In this scenario, it means console sales probably would have been lower, meaning they might be helping the console out by creating the sense of scarcity and creating all the headlines of record breaking sales. On the negative side, they might be generating false expectations for the main company and other software developers that might look at those headlines and make a decision of ramping up production of a console that might not have the demand it appears to be having.

In this case, I think that it seems to be Scenario 1.

In general scalping is something that it would be better if it didn't exist, but in the end, if people want a console, they can simply wait a few months and be able to get it at regular price, so it really affect the first few months. Here is where the idea of @wohufana seems really good. A march release would allow for higher stock as maybe factories are able to focus more exclusively instead of trying to compete with all the other products that want to sell in during the holidays. It also provides with less urgency by consumers to get the system. I think that scalpers might benefit a lot from people trying to buy these as gifts for christmas, people end up spending large sums of money because they really want to get that gift to their loved one. In march, this urgency would drop so demand for scalped consoles should be a bit lower.