Walmart got a big Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 restock today, but as expected, it sold out within seconds. That said, it seems like they may be going in waves. The consoles are still in high demand, despite them being out for about eight months now. Due to a variety of reasons, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are incredibly hard for people to get their hands on.
Sony has already noted that it expects the PlayStation 5 to be sold out until 2022 at the earliest, but there will still opportunities to get one. Sony is aiming to have sold 14 million PS5 units this year, so there will still be quite a few consoles for people to get. But the windows will be increasingly limited as the holiday season approaches.
According to Tom's Guide, Walmart restocked its Xbox and PlayStation 5 pages at around 3 PM ET and almost instantly sold out. The Xbox Series X remained in stock for about 20 minutes, but the PS5 was gone almost immediately. It shows that the demand for the consoles hasn't really changed much since its launch. It's not surprising that there's a rush of people trying to get these new consoles still, especially following Xbox's big E3 showcase.
There will no doubt be more restocks leading up to the holiday season, but unless volume dramatically increases, that may make it even harder to get a console. Between families trying to buy gifts and gamers who want a new console to play 2021's big releases on a new console, there will likely be an increase in demand. As a result, it wouldn't be shocking if there were even more scalpers as a result of the intense holiday hunger for the consoles. Either way, most games are coming to last-gen consoles still, so it's not like there will be anything that absolutely requires a new console.
Games like Battlefield 2042 are starting to show a "next-gen" quality with increased player counts, allowing for a larger scale game. Some games will certainly benefit more, but they're still available on last-gen as well. It remains to be seen whether or not Xbox or PlayStation will find a way to make buying a new console easier this holiday season, preventing the instant sellouts in scalping in some way. Either way, it's heavily expected that consoles will be more readily available in 2022, which is when it will start to matter as current-gen exclusives begin to become prominent with games like Starfield.
Source: Tom's Guide