The PlayStation 5 is almost easy to buy - The Verge

Console restocks for the PS5 aren’t selling out as quickly as they used to. Recent restocking events can last hours, or over a dozen hours in limited cases. The PS5 is almost easy to buy, but we’re waiting for more retailers to stock it.

Throughout the pandemic, it has brought me extreme joy to pen articles celebrating that hard-to-find tech is getting easier to buy at retail cost. First, it was the Xbox Series S and Nintendo Switch OLED, then the Series X, and almost all Nvidia and AMD GPUs followed a few months after. We’re getting very close to being able to say that the PS5 will soon join the club.

Yesterday, we wrote that Sony had kicked off another one of its once infrequent (but becoming much more frequent) PS5 restocks, and the $549.99 console bundle that includes the PS5 with a disc drive along with Horizon Forbidden West is still in stock about 19 hours later. Even after everyone has had the chance to run through the queue and make a purchase, there’s still stock left over, chilling out. You can probably go take a nap right now, come back, and buy one later if you want.

A beautiful sight indeed.

That kind of luxury — buying a gadget when you want just because the thought came to you — is something that a lot of people (including a lot of us at The Verge) are relearning. And it’s great. Those early days when we had the mighty responsibility to tell readers when they had minutes — no, seconds — to score a console felt special, but I think we’re all ready to move on.

In February, Sony was still struggling to put PS5s on shelves (the PS4 had sold more in its lifespan at that post-launch mark). Recent sales data from the NPD Group states that the PlayStation 5, along with the Xbox Series X, had much higher year-over-year sales in July 2022 than in July 2021, suggesting that consoles have become much more readily available.

US NPD HW - PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series dollar sales each experienced double-digit percentage growth when compared to a year ago.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23312949/ps5-console-restock-playstation-5

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