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San Marcos High School ~ Santa Barbara, CA

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PlayStation 5 Release and “Scalper” Bots

With the arrival of the PlayStation 5 games that look even better than real life will be possible. It is no wonder why everyone wants to order this console. However, many people are having trouble getting their hands on one, everywhere they look they are sold out. 

The PS5. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

There are retail bots called “scalpers” that automatically buy every PS5 from a website they can. As soon as the console gets restocked, the bot gets notified and buys them all away before any human can get on the website. AIs trained for this function can buy over 50,000 consoles a second and learn how to be better each time they do it. These scalpers buying the ps5 in bulk are bordering on fraud, but are not necessarily illegal. The owners of the bots only hope to resell them, perhaps working for a different company or seller. People find the scalper owner’s website and are surprised when they can actually find what they wanted, not knowing the owner may have upped the price. These people unknowingly fuel the bots even more with their money. So how could a person compete with a robot that will buy a website’s entire stock before anyone else gets there? Short answer is, they can’t, we will just have to wait until the bot trend dies out and the sellers are restocked. Many shoppers might get notified that the stock has been filled up again and even make it to enter their payment information just to find an error screen on the final click. 

PlayStation 4 Sales compared to the Nintendo Switch and Wii U. As the playstation 4 started to lose traction with the release of the Switch, Sony had some catching up to do. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

People really want the PS5 because of the amazing, next-gen graphics, and not only that, but it has a strong list of game releases ready to come out backing it up. An already impressive game for the PS4 was Marvel’s Spider-Man (2017), but now for the PS5, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales has been released, as of November 12th. Another exciting sequel is Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. I am very excited about the visuals, as an impressive artist @donglulittlefish on Instagram worked on the concept art for this game. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is sure to please anyone who appreciates Norse mythology, or even just playing as an ax-wielding Viking. Another game, Hitman 3 is set to release on January, 20, 2021, and we can expect much more stealth and high-stakes gameplay. If you do get your hands on a PS5, you can expect amazing visuals, riveting games, and impressive stories. 

Without a doubt, the Playstation 5 is in high demand, and for good reason as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy the PS5 and this rise of unfair retail bots will die down. With this new age of consoles games are sure to advance beyond anything we can even imagine, and Playstation had a lot of catching up to do after the release of the Nintendo Switch. 

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PlayStation 5 Release and “Scalper” Bots