Walmart
- The PlayStation 5 launched on Thursday, November 12, but it isn’t being sold in stores.
- The only way to get a PlayStation 5 at launch is through a pre-order, but at least one retailer is selling PS5s digitally on a first come, first serve basis: Walmart.
- The first drop of PlayStation 5 consoles came at 12 p.m. ET, and it promptly took down the entire Walmart webstore.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
After months of anticipation, Sony’s new PlayStation 5 launched on Thursday.
Due to the ongoing global pandemic, Sony decided not to go the traditional console launch route and isn’t selling the new game console in retail stores at launch.
Instead, the only way to get one on November 12 is to have pre-ordered the console months ago through one of several different retailers. But at least one retailer, Walmart, announced plans for staggered PlayStation 5 supply drops throughout the day.
The first such re-supply, at 12 p.m. ET, caused the entire Walmart web store to crash. A technical error message said simply, “no healthy upstream.” It has since been replaced by a more user-friendly page explaining that the store was overloaded by too many shoppers at one time:
Similar issues happened back in September, when Sony and Microsoft first allowed customers to pre-order their respective next-gen game consoles.
It's unclear how much of a re-supply Walmart issued for its first drop, but it's clear that there weren't enough for everyone who wanted to buy one: Despite our own attempts to buy one, Walmart sold out of consoles in less than five minutes.
Walmart says it will resupply PS5 consoles online on a rolling basis at 3 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. ET, and 9 p.m. ET.
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