It probably goes without saying that the PlayStation 5 is the most wanted piece of technology during the course of the 2020 holiday season. Long before it was even given a price and release date, the anticipation was unbelievably high for the system, which caused some unfortunate circumstances when it first became available to pre-order. With such high demand, Sony announced that the system was the company’s biggest console launch ever, which was something we saw coming considering we’ve already seen Japan’s sales numbers. Apparently, the United Kingdoms’ numbers have been tallied to some extent, as according to source from Video Games Chronicles, the PlayStation 5 had the biggest console launch in the history of the entire country.
The PlayStation 5 beat out the previous record-holder which was its own predecessor, the PlayStation 4 with more than 250,000 units sold. According to the report, the majority of those sold units was the disc-based system that cost $499, as opposed to the Digital Edition which costs $399. The report also mentions that the PlayStation 5 easily outsold its competition, the Xbox Series X|S which sold roughly 155,000 units. These numbers are more than likely to increase exponentially since both Sony and Microsoft have been trying to restock their respective consoles at several retailers throughout the month, including their own sites.
However, due to the insane demand and little to no supply for either system, especially the PlayStation 5, scalpers have been escalating the prices to an alarming level, some of which reach the thousands. Hopefully, Sony and company can get more supply to satiate the ever-increasing demand, but it’s probably going to take a long time until we get to that point, especially with the ramifications of the COVID-19 Pandemic still ravaging the world.