While I think it's wrong for people to jack up the price of the system to make a buck, in's pretty meaningless all and all. It will stop once the supply comes though in a few months and you can get it for its retail price. As for legality, it's something that only affects a small number of people so it's doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Nope. It's no more illegal than buying a game and reselling it. Or buying a collector card and selling it for 10 times its price 20 years later.

What people choose to do with something that they buy and own is their business. It's just a dickmove. Hell, they could buy them just to trash them if they wanted.

I do believe that it should be better controlled though by the outlets actually selling these things. The idea is that for products like these that are in high demand you want them to be sold (at least in the beginning) for one per household. These companies need to update their fulfillment systems to allow better more stringent processes. Ensuring that a user can only get one of such units at least every 3- 6 months. And there are tons of ways they can do that.

So to me, the issue isn't scalpers, it's the retailers selling these things. They know better. If they were sold in a store, they wouldn't let anyone walk in and buy 3 consoles at once if that item has a one per customer policy. Why are they not enforcing the same thing online?

Hard to say. I would say no. If people in general would become more clever to not buy consoles from scalpers, this will become a thing of the past really quick. The best way to punish the scalper is not to buy from him and let him waste his money.

Nah you should have the right to sell whats yours. Basic supply and demand.

There are more important things the government should be focusing on like unregulated gambling in games. Consoles will always have enough stock at some point you don't even need one right now, cause the only worthwhile next-gen exclusive is a remake.

Im somewere closer to yes, than no honestly.
it feels wrong, that people buy something others look forwards to and actually want, just so they can keep it out of the hands of these people, and profit off of them.
It also hurts the main seller, whose purpose was to make a certain number of product avaliable to these people (honest buyers).

On the other hand... how in the world would you enforce it? or prevent it?

reguardless of legality.... its a dick move.

Well tbh the main seller is paying their workers less than a dollar an hour in terrible working conditions to make and manufacture these consoles.

Yes.

I hate scalpers, but we don't need more laws, particularly ones that could either harm legit reselling of used items, or make a legally too vague distinction between legit and illicit reselling and so be repealed by constitutional or supreme courts. Much better leave the issue to stores to prevent it, limiting the number of units each customer can buy, if the good has very strong demand compared to offer, and using the best tech available to defeat or at least hamper bots in online sales.

Nope, it's just good ole capitalism at work. Buy low and sell high. If you start picking and choosing which goods you want to no longer apply to reselling , things get messy. I can't say that I can have a strong opinion on the act of scalping because I have discipline and patience to just wait for when the product is widely available. Especially for something as non essential as gaming.

However, the use of bots to purchase entire warehouses of stock is just wrong in my opinion. These retailers need to put in place software that makes botting harder to accomplish when checking out. If they really say they care about consumers like they all seem to say, they should invest in making sure they're able to sell as much product to as many customers as possible at MSRP.

If the government wants to step in and say otherwise, I have no problem with that either. As others have pointed out it's illegal to scalp tickets so it's not like there isn't any precedent. The other issue is ebay has little motive to actually take down scalper accounts because they're getting 10% of every $1500 PS5 or XSX sold. And then PayPal (which is owned by ebay) gets another cut of that $1500. There are still scalpers selling disinfectant spray on ebay. Policing these things seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

My advice, just stall the scalpers out. Don't buy from them. It's not like either console has "must have exclusives" or games that can't be played on Gen 8.