Board 8 > Can you remember a console that was in such short supply and high demand as the

(+) Yeah! (+)

ps5?

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Wii
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What he said.

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DS was pretty bad during the initial few months...

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The Wii was made regularly available waaaaaaaaaay faster than the PS5.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

The Wii was made regularly available waaaaaaaaaay faster than the PS5.

It was still selling faster than people could get their hands on it though. It was over two years before you could walk into a store and reliably get one off the shelf. I started actively hunting for a Wii over a year into its lifetime and it took me almost as long to get one as it did for me to get a PS5.

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Hmm, maybe it was just markets then? I was an hour out of Atlanta at the time and the Wii was certainly in demand, but I was in Gamestop at least once a week back in those days and they always had them 4 or 5 months out from launch.

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That being said the PS5 has had other things to contend with that the Wii did not making it more difficult to obtain. A disastrous pre-order period, and a mostly online distribution has made it much easier for scalpers to scoop them up.

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The chip shortage aint helping PS5s either

I had to wait forever to find a Wii. Think the PS5 is still worse-off though.

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Wii and Switch

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The Wii is a great comparison, it was scarce until 2008. Different reasons for sure. And I think if you were savvy to the internet it was way easier to track down a Wii than a PS5.

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I found a Wii by sheer dumb luck in 2006 when a truckload got dumped off at Best Buy when I was there. I didn't hesitate.

I don't have any interest in a PS5 quite yet. Gonna wait for more games that I can't play on my PS4.
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The PS5 demand is puzzling to me

Like, I get that people want the new thing, and this is how it's always been, but it feels weird to have such high demand given the lack of games right now

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VintageGin posted...

The PS5 demand is puzzling to me

Like, I get that people want the new thing, and this is how it's always been, but it feels weird to have such high demand given the lack of games right now

The PS5 games are good and its also the best console for playing PS4 games on too because they load WAY faster

zero loads is really the selling point with the PS5 it's so good

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Isn't the Series X also pretty scarce? I've never seen either one available outside of scalpers and stupid bundles.

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bryans7 posted...

Isn't the Series X also pretty scarce? I've never seen either one available outside of scalpers and stupid bundles.

The stupid bundles are retailers taking advantage. I've only ever seen the PS5 in them too and getting closer to Christmas they're getting worse.

Xbox Series at least has the All Access option, which seems to be more readily available, if you really want one.

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The Wii as others have said. That is the only one though and I can see it getting passed eventually by the PS5 and Series X.

VintageGin posted...

The PS5 demand is puzzling to me

Like, I get that people want the new thing, and this is how it's always been, but it feels weird to have such high demand given the lack of games right now

Demand is fairly normal for a high selling new system. The chip shortage is resulting in there being fewer available and scalpers are taking advantage of this and buying them to drive up the price.

Also, the PS5 is a better offering now than the PS4 was a year after launch. That one was the real headscratcher - it seems people were just desperate for a new console after so long of the Xbox 360 and PS3. There are already quite a few good next gen exclusives plus it is a much better way to play PS4 games.

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swordz9 posted...

The chip shortage aint helping PS5s either

somehow everyone forgets this
or maybe the panorama is over where you live

The NES mini if that counts

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There was certainly a big supply-and-demand issue from launch until Christmas (I had given up looking for one and got lucky to walk into GameStop looking for something else and they had two right on the counter), but by the six month mark or so they were collecting dust on store shelves if I remember correctly.

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I think the demand for the Wii/NES Classic was much higher and the supply for the PS5 was much lower due to chip shortage so they're not exactly the same

But maybe I'm wrong

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Underleveled posted...

There was certainly a big supply-and-demand issue from launch until Christmas (I had given up looking for one and got lucky to walk into GameStop looking for something else and they had two right on the counter), but by the six month mark or so they were collecting dust on store shelves if I remember correctly.

If you're talking about the NES Mini, that was definitely not the case for the first release. That thing sold out in seconds up until they stopped releasing it, and then did so again once they rereleased it later. Though it's possible they put out enough of them the second time that some sat on shelves for awhile, but I remember having to be quick to get it the second time.

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The Wii was only hard to get in the first year here. The PS5 is still nowhere to be seen a year on.

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It's tough to compare the Wii and PS5 because, like Lopen said, the circumstances are different. Wii was pure demand, there was no shortage attached. PS5's a case where they might have been able to meet demand without the shortage, we don't really know. The decision to also primarily release PS5 online only for so long also raised the scarcity since it allowed scalpers to really thrive.

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Switch demand was pretty high at the beginning of lockdown, but that didn't last as long as Wii or PS5

The only one that's affected me was the Switch. I haven't had interest in any other system in the last 10 years, but after I won the contest here, I thought it would be appropriate to spend the prize on a Switch.

Never found one without paying scalpers, which I refuse to do. Of course, the fact that you could find scalpers selling them probably doesn't put it in the same category as the Wii or PS5.

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Oh, it's very easy to find scalpers selling PS5s. They're just selling them for like $1,000.

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