The police were called to a popular department store in Tokyo on Saturday after the planned sale of the new PlayStation 5 “href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/playstation/ps5/ “> PlayStation 5 consoles went down chaos.
Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district has promised to sell hundreds of PlayStation consoles “href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/playstation/ “> PlayStation 5 through a first-come-first-served policy According to personal accounts on social media, the entire process was canceled after hundreds of consumers flooded the store.
As shown in several social media videos, huge crowds have formed within Yodobashi while the team planned to distribute numbered tickets to the PS5 consoles. The situation seemed quite calm until the employees started to distribute tickets, causing the crowd to start pushing, pushing and shouting.
“They canceled the sale because people were crazy,” wrote Creatures Inc’s Dave Gibson, which was in the store. “[They] pushed with so much force that even the cash registers and employees went back. I’ve never seen this kind of insanity in Japan before … ”
He added: “The people who pay at the tellers have been pushed out of the way. Money left in the trays. Records and employees pushed back into the storage area. “
Tokyo is currently in a state of emergency due to the resurgence of coronavirus infections in the city. As part of the application, companies are encouraged to work remotely and residents are encouraged to avoid non-essential tours.
As noted by the PSU, Saturday’s event was probably popular due to its order of arrival policy, which is unusual for PS5 sales. So far, most Japanese retailers have been making lotteries for their PS5 inventory, which is considered more fair given the huge demand for consoles.
Retailer Yodobashi also generally requires customers to have active credit accounts to purchase items on demand, such as the PS5. However, Akihabara’s location is one of the few stores that don’t.
With this context in mind, the sale of the PS5 on Saturday probably would have been attractive to consumers and also to retailers who wanted to sell the consoles at a profit.
Gibson wrote: “I would estimate that about 70% of that crowd are resellers. God I hope I didn’t get a corona because I was caught in that insanity. “
A report recently suggested that the targeting of PS5 console retailers is so high that the long-term health of the PlayStation 5 in Japan may be under threat.
Like many other regions, the scarcity of PS5 in Japan has been exacerbated by scalpers who resell large quantities of the console with significant markings, keeping it out of consumers’ reach and, in turn, hampering essential software sales.
The indirect effect is an unusually low software attachment rate in Japan, reports Bloomberg. As noted by the publication, a healthy proportion for a new console is about one game sold for each console purchased.
But based on Famitsu’s Japanese sales data, in mid-December Sony Interactive Entertainment “href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/sony/ “> Sony sold about 213,000 PS5 consoles in the first month product availability and only 63,000 physical games.
There are other factors that may be impacting the first physical sales of PS5 software, especially the move to digital. The PS5 also comes pre-installed with a game, Astro’s Playroom “href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/astros-playroom/ “> Astro’s Playroom, and is compatible with previous PlayStation 4 versions” href = “https: //www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/playstation/ps4/”> PS4 titles.
“Even if we consider purchases of digital download software, the percentage of PlayStation 5s actually sold in use is not that high, which means that current demand is limited by for-profit retailers,” according to Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute.
Another analyst told Bloomberg that consumers’ inability to purchase the console and the resulting impact on software sales could negatively impact the profitability of the PlayStation business in the coming years.
Bloomberg even claims that a major Japanese publisher has discussed internally the possibility of delaying its PS5 games based on concerns about the initial market response to the console.