Haste makes
things nasty…

Sony launched PS5 with the most anticipated price
and release date during its presentation yesterday. Seems like they haven’t
done their homework as they forgot to mention when and where to buy the gaming
set *utter mess*.

Gamers were left with so many questions until the tweet appeared to make things clearer: the pre-orders would be open today on
September 17th, and that too for an hour or two.

Now, it’s complete chaos out there!

Considering the high anticipation for PS5,
retailers found it as the perfect opportunity to capitalize on the demand, and
they promptly turned the pre-order situation into a free-for-all, starting
pre-orders a day early and letting the fastest and savviest buyers dive in.

Some secured pre-orders a day early by walking in their
local Gamestop, while others succeeded with one of Walmart’s entries for the
PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition.

Walmart even vivaciously tweeted that they are
selling the console ahead of schedule:

GameStop also jumped in with the console
announcement and issued a press release promoting the PS5 availability online; the most surprising thing was that, at the time of the announcement, they
didn’t have a product page where consumers could actually buy one.

As of now, PS5 console is available at Target and
Best Buy too. GameStop’s product page is now up, but strangely, their website
seems to have triggered some DDos protection and was initially inaccessible for
many buyers.

During all this chaos, you’ll be very lucky if you
can actually manage to get one without getting swamped into the crowd. Online
buyers are also facing difficulties where users have their PS5 consoles ripped
out of their cart in the middle of a transaction, while others have gone out of
stock!

Target just announced that it’s already exhausted
their pre-orders listings. Reports are coming in that Walmart has started
cancelling some completed pre-orders. Imagine, you have successfully made a
pre-order after wrestling with the online crowd, only to find that it has been
cancelled. Brutal!

It means that you not only have to be on time, but
also constantly refresh your page to ensure that you have one in your cart; and
obviously, you have to be as quick as Flash while adding your payment info
before it disappears as you check-out.

And if you get lucky and manage to secure a PS5
console pre-order, don’t keep your hopes high as there’s no guarantee whether
it will arrive on the launch date.

Even if you’re ordering online from GameStop, you
have to go in-person to confirm your purchase. The minimum down payment for the
PS5 is $50 at the retailer.

Amazon also boarded on a haste-train in the US: it
started its pre-orders right before midnight, and seems to have exhausted
both the versions before midnight.

Ahead of the launch, Sony had promised its
customers that it would give plenty of time and advance notice about when
pre-orders would begin.

Sadly, it seems like Sony is not the company of its
words.