Id Software co-founder John Carmack suggested a new approach to tackle the scourge of money changers and resellers who are taking advantage of the global semiconductor shortages: auctioning off new consoles and PC hardware. This would prevent bots from being able to instantly buy consoles as soon as they go on sale. But it would also come with some of its own complications.
The supply of PS5 and Xbox Series X / S consoles failed to keep up with demand, while PC hardware, such as Nvidia’s latest line of RTX graphics cards, was also purchased by scalpers and resold for a price that includes a considerable increase. . When the figures were last calculated, it was estimated that resellers had more than $ 82 million in profit.
Carmack’s idea is for Sony, Microsoft and Nvidia to eliminate business intermediaries and auction off console stocks themselves. Would this initially lead to incredibly high bids from interested buyers? Certainly, but Carmack believes that this strategy would prevent retailers from getting their hands on new generation consoles and making a profit later.
“Given the scarcity and speculators on things like 3090 GPUs and new consoles, it looks like it would really be better with a transparent auction system directly from the manufacturers and a more efficient market” Carmack wrote. “The world of sales channels has avoided this in the past, but we may be overcoming that for many products. There would be a lot of outrage at the prices released immediately, but removing middlemen should pay off better for consumers in the end.”
In another post, Carmack also mentioned that the current low availability of these consoles remains advantageous for the Sony and Microsoft businesses, as the consoles consistently run out in minutes whenever new inventory is purchased. Tackling the retailer market with higher prices for these consoles can hurt current consumer demand for these high-value items.
The market remains a high-risk game with the fastest fingers first for anyone interested in purchasing a PS5 or Xbox Series X. Resellers are instantly taking consoles using an army of malware and bots to do this, which led to the UK government the Minister of Digital and Culture, Caroline Dinenage, to propose a bill that would make scalping consoles illegal.
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