I guess they wanted almost all consoles to be sold this way and in all territories

On paper seems great....  but all territories seems like a logistical nightmare.  

Oh I'm not disagreeing that scalping is a smaller portion, but it's still significant enough to become a publicly acknowledged issue.  The issue there is that we have have no way of tracking actual scalp sales versus legitimate sales.  Example: 20 million sold, we can't tell if 5 million of those were purchased through scalpers or just 1 million.  So it looks like less of a problem than it really is.  "According to" Sony are the key words, and I recall them saying less than 20% were not turned on despite being sold, so it COULD be more like 1/5th which is... well, still pretty bad tbh

As for undersold, perhaps my definition is wrong or we just see it differently:

- You see undersold as "made 100 units, only able to sell 50, product is undersold".  That makes sense, so I'm not going to argue that.

- I'm seeing undersold as "made 100 reservsations, only able to complete the transaction on 50".  Not only are there stipulations on purchase, but there's also a $5 deposit required.  Remember when companies used to announce pre-order "sales" numbers?  Most companies consider deposits a "sale" because a transaction has occurred which indicates a far more reliable and higher intention to purchase.  In fact, in most cases, it's considered a near-100% intention to purchase.  So to me, reservations are "sold", but they're not actually able to meet this, so I'm calling it undersold.

Given I haven't had time to look closer, but I could very well be wrong in my definition, but I hope clarifying how I see it still helps even if I used the wrong word.

Also, I have the same thing about sales numbers that they have yet to release, and also a video where I outright say there's no way it can outsell the Switch, but it may not need to sell the millions to prove they have a working system in place for "how to combat scalpers" on a product with enough demand where it SHOULD be an issue.

I mean, I'm not arguing that, I'm just replying to the topic of how to combat scalpers and how Valve's method has for the most part reduced their presence to the point where THE concern is actually getting to your reservation, not trying to beat bots on a website because it says, "sold out" within 30 seconds of going "add to cart" lmfao

I mean, my point stands in that you can go to Steam right now and plop down a reservation on it (if you meet the stipulations).  Their method has so far proven that if you get your reservation in, you WILL get a Steam Deck.  You can't say the same for a PS5 or XSX.  You have to, *dun dun dun* combat scalper bots that are going to snag that shit fast af so you have to be all ready with your credit cards and shit at some random time of the day... Like, I understand the struggle because I've gotten an XSX, PS5, and RTX3080 all at launch by... having all payment methods ready and a non-broken F5 key at some random time of the day for a "drop".

So I don't know how this is turning into a sales discussion about the Steam Deck

As someone said. Sony logistic is to sell to retailers, they don't have the capilarity to sell and ship consoles to each house at a reasonable price.

I won't dispute semantics over this so yes, in fact we can say they are undersold because at the moment they still can't meet demand.

And sure this seems to have helped combat scalping, at least much better than what Xbox and PS have done.

I thought it was much less than 20%, more like 5%, for me 20% is to high.

Absolutely, which is why not caving to scalpers is the best practice.  I have to assume most scalpers but their upfront charge on a credit card.  If somebody has $5,000 on a credit card, let them have 15% APR for a few months....  see how that works out for them.

Ugh, I'd have to find it, but I remember someone extrapolating that 20% (or something) of PS5s have never been turned on despite being sold, I could be wrong, but I recall this being an article somewhere.  I assume the reality is that the scalping part is lower, but I can't imagine buying a PS5 and never turning it on unless *dun dun dun* scalper stock.

Yea, I don't get why people buy from scalpers.  I've never bought anything from a scalper in my life because scalpers generally ONLY scalp non-essentials.  If I can't buy and I can live without it, then I'll live without it until I can buy it lmfao

In Japan Sony implemented a measure that you need to drop your PS4 (forfeit it to Sony) as proof of ownership to buy the PS5.