In South Africa, the PS5 Digital Edition console is hard to find. At first, I thought it was just here but it seems Sony produced a very small amount of them worldwide. The stock shortage of the Digital Edition is an issue in the UK and in the US. Retailers claim there were far less PlayStation 5 Digital Edition consoles to go around.
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A source at a major UK retailer said their company’s stock allocation had been around 25 per cent for the PS5 Digital Edition compared to 75 per cent for the disc model. Other retailers in the UK claim the allocation was even lower at 20 per cent for the Digital Edition and 80 per cent for the regular console.
According to GameStop in the US, the stock allocation for nine of their stores ranged from as low as 13 per cent for the PS5 Digital Edition and went up to 33 per cent at some stores. This averaged out at 25%.
Here in SA, I heard reports that some retailers did not receive a single PlayStation 5 Digital Edition console. Other retailers claimed to have received a handful of stock. Sony never gave any indication on how rare the drive-less PS5 would be. However, the lower price tag and savings of R2,000 seems to have lured customers towards the device.
PlayStation refuses to comment on the ratio but told AV Watch that they plan on producing the right amount of consoles to meet the demand of the model type.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#12C2FF” class=”” size=”21″]”We’ve never produced two different console models at the same time before so deciding on the right number and the right ratio is very hard to know. We are doing our best to predict demand.”[/perfectpullquote]
During the weekend, Sony apologized for the chaotic PS5 pre-order campaign that saw retailers run out of stock within minutes of going live with sales. In SA, gamers are still sitting without a pre-order while they wait for more stock to arrive. We have reached out to PlayStation SA to find out if the country is set to receive more stock for launch week.
