It has been a very exciting year in tech for those looking forward to the next big releases – and many certainly weren’t disappointed. The PC gamers were met with news from both AMD and Nvidia regarding their newest graphics cards, and from AMD regarding their newest CPU too. Console lovers were met with the holiday releases of both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – but they have all had one thing in common – nothing is in stock. It has been a tough year for sure, event cancellations, extra time at home, and uncertainty for the future have many turning to alternative entertainment to stay occupied – mobile gaming for example has been proving very resilient as services like these here have been able to thrive despite adjustments in regulation – but with the promise of something new, it seemed there would be a light at the end of the tunnel, but that was short lived.
The first came for the PC gamers, whilst the new hardware was benchmarking extremely well and looking very promising at an affordable price, very early on it was clear that the manufacturers were unable to meet the growing demand for these pieces and online stores across the world sold out almost immediately with fans being met with scalpers relisted on other sites for two or three times the price. One manufacturer, Nvidia, had even been accused of scalping itself with pricing set on an auction site much higher than the initial MRSP.
Similar news range true with the consoles – those who were able to get their pre-orders in were met with a timely delivery of their new console, but those who weren’t were met with sold out signs everywhere they turned, and a similar story of hundreds of listings on auction sites with scalping prices trying to turn a quick profit. All manufacturers had largely issued the same statement – stock will return in the new year, there’s no hurry, and that everyone will get their goods – but given the growing demand and expectations for these pieces it does raise the question of why this hadn’t been addressed earlier, and why production wasn’t scaled up to meet this demand.
The easy answer is of course the ongoing coronavirus pandemic; however this isn’t the first and only occasion of this happening as similar has been seen in tech for a number of years now – it’s becoming more difficult to be amongst the first wave of users to get their hands of these devices and whilst not necessarily a bad thing in itself, it does hurt a brand image if they’re unable to deliver on a wider scale. Whilst newer consoles like the PlayStation 5 have went on to be a best seller beating out previous records set by the PlayStation 4, and a lot of optimism remains around much of this new hardware, it doesn’t seem as if many changes are being made to ensure this doesn’t occur in the future, and many cynics believe this will only get worse.