The PlayStation 5 debacle continues to amaze the masses and Sony just went and twisted the dagger in the heart of fans all over Japan. They have made the crippling announcement that there will be no in-store sales of any PlayStation 5 systems throughout Japan. In the past, there were amasses of people that stood outside waiting to get their hands on the newest system and it really added to the spectacle of the launch of new hardware, but without that, it just seems I don’t know, empty.
I was one of the people that tried to pre-order a PlayStation 5 system on Amazon the moment they started taking preorders and got all the way to the check out screen and was presented an error that stated “The product that you’re trying to purchase is no longer available” which I expected, but in the past, refreshing the screen fixed the issue and you were on your way. This was not the case, I was without a PS5 preorder, the first time since the original PlayStation, I was not getting the new console on launch day. Mind you, I’ve purchased every major console released since the Dreamcast on launch day. A large number of retailers in Japan were also holding lottery system pre-orders so I entered a number of those as well with no avail. So I had the brilliant idea that I was going to line up at my local Yodobashi Camera in Shibuya to get my hands on the system. With Sony’s announcement today, they shot my hopes and dreams out of the sky. To be fair, it’s not like there were any launch games that I wanted to play, but getting the system on launch day is special to me.
In all honesty, it makes sense if you think about it. Sony doesn’t want to carry the burden of possibly infecting tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands with COVID-19 and if Sony’s announcement is anything to go off of, they just don’t have enough systems to send to retailers for the people that didn’t or couldn’t preorder a system. So, I will just have to keep an eye out for orders when they open up again. I don’t think it’s going to be TOO long before I can get my hands on one even if I have to preorder the PS5 after it’s released.