Is it even possible to buy a PS5 that isn’t from a Chuusen or from a Scalper?

20 comments

1. Either get lucky in a lottery or go create a yodobashi credit card (this is how I got mine).

2. The problem with PS5s were in the supply chain, mainly with the chips in them. Various factors but mostly COVID caused scarcity and Sony couldn’t produce as many as they had wanted. And most of the ones they managed went to assholes looking to screw over desperate consumers. These chip shortages are in a process of winding down now. So availability should be increasing but this better availability is still meeting strong demand. You’ve waited this long, hang in a little longer. It’s going to get better.

3. I got mine from chuusen……well…..my girlfriend did….

   I have a conspiracy theory that all chuusen are biased against foreigners aha!….

   Keep on trying mate ….i think GEO has chuusen every week..

4. As some others mentioned, If you qualify for the Yodobashi credit card that is the sure fire method. This site keeps a daily track of Yodobashi inventory and they have been in stock quite a bit recently

   https://gamenv.net/ps5_yodobashi/

5. Here we go again

6. I won one from a Yamada Denki lottery, and boy did it feel badass when a dude brought a PS5 from the backroom with my name printed on it looking like he was delivering a secret package

7. Wasn’t there a campaign that you can rent a PS5 with a monthly price added to your NURO internet service, and eventually you can buy the PS5 with its remaining value after a while if you would like to?

8. A bit off topic but any games that you want that are PS5 only? Usually I guy PS for Final Fantasy but I don’t think that they made a new one just for PS5.

9. I got mine using a geo lottery in the Inaka. I live in Tokyo. But put it as my local store and low and behold I was chosen after trying to get one for over a year in Tokyo. I also was able to sell my used ps4 for what I bought it for new. . . Which just is just baffling to me.

10. Welcome to Japan, where you have to go through lottery to buy tickets, to get subjects in university and to buy videogames.
    You can only get one through a lottery ir yodobashi card. Well, I’ve been joining every single lottery available and even spent money in some stores that require a buying purchase to participate, but no luck. I’m starting to believe that all lotteries are biased against foreigners considering the amount of Chinese resellers out there, specially because of how many foreigners only got one because of their girlfriend joining a lottery instead of them.

11. It’s partly because Japan seems to have been getting way less stock than other places (I’m going to quote VGChartz don’t kill me, but it says PS5 sold just over 100k units in the US but only 11k in Japan over the same period – a 10x difference despite the USA population only being 3x bigger than Japan’s (oversimplification I know)).

    I keep hearing about the UK getting loads of shipments and it therefore being way easier to get one without jumping through all the hoops.

    Looking at the sold listings ordered newest first, you can see that disc-version PS5s are *still* selling on mercari for like 85,000 yen. Definitely an improvement from around launch (and even up to around 2-3 months ago) when they were going for well over 100,000 yen.

    I guess the question is what it will take for mercari “market” prices to come down to the point that scalpers cannot be bothered anymore.

    It happened with Nintendo Switch. There was a time (about a year ago) when you couldn’t get a Switch for retail price and now you can easily get one (or OLED like I did). I suppose part of that could be because the Switch is already super old at this point, and the market for the OLED wasn’t as big as people expected so a lot of scalpers were inconvenienced having bought up all the OLED switch stock only to be unable to sell it muwhahaha. Also because I suppose the absolute numbers are not as juicy. People were never going to pay crazy prices for a Switch (usually you’d see them for 50k at the very worst, which is basically a 15k mark up, hardly worth bothering when you can scalp a PS5 and make a much bigger profit).

12. fucking crazy that now GPU prices has gone down and you can basically buy it anywhere now but ps5 stocks are still scarce as ever.

13. Use メルカリ that’s how I got mine and the guy had only purchased it new a couple of weeks before. Paid 77,000¥

14. I went to a BIC camera the other week and they had a sign outside saying that they had PS5s in stock.

    So, there might be a few shops around that’ve got them in stock.

15. Wait, how many *yens*?

16. I bought mine from Nojima last weekend. I signed up for the app when I arrived in March. Didn’t qualify for it until this month. You had to have purchased and registered for the app before March. But they changed it to where you had to register for the app before June now. So I walked in and bought it. Granted you have to buy Forza with it.

17. If japan is still like that I have 0 hope

18. Basically no. You just gotta keep playing the chuusen until you hit it. I think for my household we did… idk, more than 25 but less than 50 probably. I stopped counting eventually, but your number will probably come up if you keep at it!

19. One recommendation is to go to electronic stores a bit outside the central area. In my case, since I live close to the Tamacenter area, there are less people going to these electronics shop and while it took a couple of months of going 6-7 times to ask for a system, I was able to get my PS5 in a Kojima store at the Ito Yokado close by.

20. You can just come to Yodobashi in Shinjuku on the weekend (around 10 am). They usually have stock and there is no line to buy it.