Seven days away from the PlayStation 5’s release date, Sony posted a blog post entailing new launch day order guidelines. They announced that their priority will be the safety of the gamers and retailers so they will not be selling any consoles in stores.
Sony has made it clear that if you want to pick up a PlayStation 5 on launch day, you’ll have to do it online. No consoles will be available in stores, and they want to encourage everyone not to wait in lines or camp outside of any retail place to snag a console. You’ll definitely want to check your retailer’s website for any extra copies if you are waiting to pick one up. Most retailers will still be allowing pick-ups for orders. If you have a pre-order to pick up that should still be possible, just check with whatever you store you pre-ordered from to get more details.
In the UK, there will be a national lockdown that lasts from November 5th until December 2nd. This will be affecting the launch days of the PS5 and Xbox consoles. All non-essential retailers will be closed because of the coronavirus and therefore have been forced to update their policies on their pre-order procedures.
The UK retailer, Game, tweeted on November 4th and asked anyone with console pre-orders to come pay for them so they can pick them up on the launch day. The retailer also mentioned that more details would be in the emails it sends out once you’ve paid. At least gamers will be able to pick up their pre-orders, but no one will be able to arrive at the retailer’s stores to get a console without a pre-order. This will surely affect sales to some degree.
Meanwhile in Japan, the PlayStation 5 pre-orders have sold out entirely. Sony has also said that there will not be anymore consoles coming in time for the launch day. Also, due to the pandemic, Sony has no plans to do any in-store events. I’ve got to hand it to Sony here though, keeping things as safe as possible is a great call to make. It can’t be easy to make all of these decisions so close to launch, but they are definitely the right ones. Keeping gamers and staff everywhere safe is the best thing any company can do in these tough times.
Earlier when pre-orders showed up online, Amazon also had some issues. They sent emails to everyone stating that they cannot guarantee launch day delivery, which is understandable but upsetting to some. Since then, they have slowly been trying to resolve the issue, but I suppose that we will see how things wash out on November 12th. Everyone is eager to get their hands on the next gen console and the race is on to see who can get them out on time.
As we get closer to the launch date of the PlayStation 5, more and more news keeps popping up. I think we all expected that the pandemic would affect these next gen releases, but we didn’t have a clear picture until we got closer to the dates. Regardless of what the next few days hold, soon the PS5 console will be out and about in the world.
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