At least that wasn’t your last chance
That went about as poorly as it possibly could’ve. PlayStation 5 pre-orders went live late Wednesday in the least coordinated effort imaginable. Every retailer opened their pre-orders up at a random and weird time, and then sold through their inventory in mere minutes.
Even people who ended up securing a PS5 pre-order can’t sleep comfortably in the knowledge that they’ll have Sony’s newest on November 12. Yesterday, Amazon sent out emails warning that any PS5 pre-orders were subject to being canceled due to accidental overselling. If Amazon screwed this up, everyone’s left assuming that Walmart, Target, and Best Buy very possibly screwed this up too.
This doesn’t bode well! (Hopefully it’s mostly base covering.) Just happy to (still) have one coming, though. pic.twitter.com/n5TxdnXD6P
— Jordan Devore (@DtoidJordan) September 18, 2020
So, what happened? Well, it seems as though Walmart went rogue and fucked it up for everybody. Walmart sent out this tweet and then set its PS5 pre-orders live ahead of the agreed-upon time. It left everyone else scrambling to put theirs up for sale as quickly as possible.
Make you wait to get the new #PlayStation5? Nah, that’s not like us. Go on, preorder it NOW!
— Walmart (@Walmart) September 16, 2020
It left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Sony finally addressed the situation today, apologizing for the chaotic way everything went down:
Let’s be honest: PS5 preorders could have been a lot smoother. We truly apologize for that.
Over the next few days, we will release more PS5 consoles for preorder – retailers will share more details.
And more PS5s will be available through the end of the year. pic.twitter.com/h1TaGsGBun
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 19, 2020
The silver lining is that it wasn’t the last opportunity to nab a PlayStation 5 pre-order. Sony is opening up more stock over the next few days. Sony also says “more PS5s will be available through the end of the year,” which makes it seems as though the launch shipment won’t be only chance to get one during the holiday season.
How, exactly, do you get a PS5 then? That is something that Sony hopefully outlines very specifically before the next wave of pre-orders goes live. Microsoft already did this with the upcoming Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X pre-orders. It has everyone feeling confident about their plan of attack for getting a next-gen Xbox. Sony needs to follow suit and nail some uniform messaging about when all pre-orders go up. It can’t leave everything in the hands of each individual retailer. That already happened once and it’s why we’re in the position we’re in.