With the PlayStation 5 approaching one year on the market soon, we’re still at a point where many people have been unable to secure one of the new consoles to upgrade from the PlayStation 4. The holiday season will expectedly bring about another rush of people looking to get their hands on a PlayStation 5, but Sony has said it’ll only have “a limited amount” of consoles available to purchase through PlayStation Direct during the holidays. To help people prepare for that process, Sony announced this week that it’s opening up a registration system for people to receive invites to purchase the console.
Over on the PlayStation site, there’s now a page that’s been set up to give people a shot at getting their PlayStation 5 console this holiday season. By using a pretty standard lottery system, people are asked to sign in with their PlayStation Network ID and then hit the “Sign Up” button to confirm their interest. “If selected, we will contact you via email with instructions and details,” Sony said about the system. That means there’s no guarantee that you’ll get chosen to purchase a PlayStation 5, so just as we’ve seen from people waiting in virtual queues only to be met with “sold out” messages afterwards, there’s a chance you might not get a PlayStation 5 from this.
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On top of that, receiving an invitation isn’t even a guarantee that you’ll get a PlayStation 5. The invitations are time-limited, but they’re only good for one PlayStation 5 console, so you at least should have fewer worries about scalpers scooping up all the consoles. Limitations also exist on things like the DualSense controllers and other accessories to avoid those selling out too quickly.
This is just the first registration opportunity of its kind for the holiday season from Sony, but it’s likely we’ll see other retailers pitching the same opportunity soon. Sony’s PSN ID requirement is unique in that it notifies select people of their chances to purchase the console, but for everyone else like Best Buy, Amazon, and others, you can probably expect to just get notifications about stock if you sign up for those alerts.
Sony did not yet announce when it intends for its PlayStation 5 purchase invites to be sent out.
