Listen, we know this is news you don’t want to hear but the truth really hurts. While many of you may know that local stock for the PlayStation 5 is scarce, we’re afraid that’s only a half-truth. Stock for Sony’s latest console isn’t just hard to come by… it’s impossible to find. There are currently zero PS5s available anywhere in the country. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
So please stop emailing us! Stuff doesn’t sell consoles at the best of times and certainly not when there aren’t any available to anyone in the whole of South Africa. We even went and asked Sony SA what the story was and it confirmed that, “all retail channels have been sold out.” Which is pretty bad news for all those parents having to deal with the fact they promised their kids a PlayStation 5 for Christmas but didn’t get in for the two waves of pre-orders. Well, it’s as good a time as any to teach the kids they can’t always get what they want.
PlayStation 5’s aren’t just scarce in South Africa though…
Yeah, this a global problem so don’t be all mad at South Africa for the lack of stock. In fact, it’s something that Sony has been aware of for some time now and tried to address before it became a big problem. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said as much in an interview where he clarified, “Everything is sold. Absolutely everything is sold,” he said. “I’ve spent much of the last year trying to be sure that we can generate enough demand for the product. And now… I’m spending a lot more time on trying to increase supply to meet that demand.”
According to Ryan, even if there hadn’t been a global pandemic Sony would have battled with stock of the PlayStation 5. “The way we took it to market might have been a bit different, but the actual product would have been the same,” said Ryan. “We might have had a few more to sell, but not very many; the guys on the production/manufacturing side have worked miracles.”
Of course, people have become desperate to get their hands on the console. A quick glance through Facebook Marketplace revealed several folks offering upwards of R10,000 to buy other people’s PlayStation 5 pre-orders. It’s nice to know that there are still optimists out there, you know?