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Comment by short12 | Hacker News Reader

Why are things like the PS5 not being handled the same way and squeeze the scummy scalpers out of the game

What I would like to see is PS5's sold at market price by Sony, but the overage is donated to a charity of the buyer's choice.

It pushes the scalpers out of the game, which means there's less idle inventory, and the price can come down a little faster.

Another alternative is to sell at MSRP, but bind it to the buyer for a year. This means that it can be only be resold as a brick within a year, which is obviously unattractive to scalpers. To prevent scalpers selling a sale-sniping service, just take orders from qualified buyers anytime, then fill them randomly in e.g. a 7 day window. Within a week you either get a PS5 bound to you or a refund and a chance to try again.

I have also thought of the tie it the buyer idea and overall I think that would destroy the scalping market

I like your idea about the fluidity of market rate with something being done good with the amount above x price

Because that would cause an uproar that Sony is scalping gamers. Same with Nvidia.

They would be selling at their MSRP

And those are usually not much of a surprise in price generation over generation without something being radically new

One of the graphics card makers (PNY?) created an invitation system and would sell to randomly selected invites at MSRP. They stopped doing it, though -- I suspect they got flooded by scalpers adding immense numbers of email addresses into the "pool".

Defeating the scale part of the scalper attack means charging an entrance fee, or using some other "proof" that hard to get at scale (like a credit card number). I like the idea of a long-term refundable reservation fee (pay $25 to get on the lottery list via distinct credit card, and if it's not delivered in a year or two you get your money back).

Something like a Gamestop membership is somewhat useful as well, but I'd just really rather see the manufacturers adopt reservation systems.

Of course this is all just idle speculation. Lots of smart people (on both sides) have been thinking about this problem for a long time.

You say scummy scalpers like it isn't every random person also doing it. Every time I've heard of someone coming across an extra one the last year they've had zero qualms about selling it for a profit. The only difference is that some people decide to do it more often.

As a sibling comment bored, there are ways to deal with this, but honestly other than selling them at market price or somehow making more, most options are limited, because that's just how the market works.

Brick the devices. Also those people that do that are assholes

We're not talking about food or medicine here. It's a leisure machine.

I'm not going to begrudge someone making a couple hundred extra bucks because they got lucky. That money isn't coming from you or me, it's coming from Sony, who could be selling at that price but isn't because they want to manage customer expectations. PS5s cost the market price, and Sony happens to sell some at a steep discount, and some people make some money out of that. If Sony didn't sell at that discount, you'd still have to pay the same amount, but Sony would be getting the money, because the market demand and current supply is such that PS5s cost a lot of money.

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