It’s still dark when the first brave begin to form a line in front of a Tokyo electronics store in the hope of buying a PlayStation or Xbox game console, a scene that has become usual in Japan, particularly affected by shortages.
In search of a PlayStation 5 since February, Tetsuya, 50, joined a queue of several dozen people shortly after 6:30 a.m. in front of a shop in Akihabara, the “geek” district of the Japanese capital. But around 8 a.m., a uniformed employee comes to announce that the store has received neither PS5 nor Xbox that day. The crowd disperses quickly and silently. “It’s a shame, but I’ll try my luck again if I have the chance”philosopher Tetsuya, interviewed by AFP.
Sony and Microsoft machines – Nintendo’s Switch is also affected – suffered from supply chain disruptions as soon as they were released in November 2020, further accentuated this year by confinements in China, complicating production and delivery. .
Japanese electronics stores, after experiencing scenes of chaos when consoles were put on sale that sometimes required the intervention of the police, have for the most part since opted for online sales by lottery in order to avoid gatherings in the midst of a pandemic.
To discourage the scalping, the purchase in order to then resell at a high price on the internet, some brands also choose to sell their consoles without warning, according to random arrivals. The phenomenon called “guerrilla sale” in the Archipelago, a term that would have appeared when Nintendo’s DS console, victim of its success, encountered supply problems in the 2000s, thus pushing hundreds of people to try their luck throughout Japan, most often on weekends, before the shops open.
Birth of a specialized site to find a console
At first left to their own devices for lack of reliable information, consumers gradually organized themselves, and one of them had the idea of aggregating on a website information gathered in the field by the details.
“Last summer, I tried for three months to buy a PlayStation 5, but every time I went to a store, the stocks ran out”tells AFP the manager of the site, who wishes to remain anonymous.“To find out if the console was on sale, the only way was to call all the stores or find testimonials on Twitter. I figured everyone had the same problem and creating a place to share information would be of service to the community.”
This 40-year-old Japanese man, who is also a researcher in artificial intelligence, collects all the information posted on his site’s forum and compiles it into a weekly calendar, allowing users to estimate where and when they will have the best chance of finding a console. .
His investment in community service is time-consuming: he says he spends 7 to 12 hours a day on weekends sorting and trying to verify up to 500 daily messages. Its site also gives practical information, explaining for example where to queue in front of each store.
“I don’t have a weekend life, but if I stop, people who want to buy a console will be in trouble”, he said, hoping to support people “who really love video games” against scalpers.
Large profits possible on resale
Beyond the production and delivery problems, Japan is suffering from Sony’s strategy of serving the European and North American markets as a priority, explains analyst Hideki Yasuda of Toyo Securities to AFP. He estimates that only 5-8% of the approximately 20 million PS5s sold worldwide have been in Japan.
At the 2013 launch of the PS4, Sony’s previous console, “The smartphone game market was exploding in Japan while the console market was treading water”, explains Mr. Yasuda. “Sony probably thought it was going to all but disappear in the 2020s, especially as Japan’s population declines.”
Result, the PS5 has become an object of speculation, slips the analyst. “If you buy a PlayStation for 55,000 yen (390 euros), you can easily resell it for 80,000 or 100,000 yen.Many people who buy a console in + guerrilla sale + therefore resell it immediately, at full price”even if it means buying it later when it is normally available in stores, he adds.
Retailers still have a bright future ahead of them: despite the promise made in May by Jim Ryan, head of Sony’s gaming division, of a “significant increase” of production this year, Mr. Yasuda estimates that we will not see massive PS5 supplies until the second half of 2023.