A Tokyo shop’s attempt to sell PS5 consoles has ended in chaos, with a witness saying, ‘I’ve never seen that kind of insanity in Japan before’.
There’s been a lot of talk lately, of how demand for the PlayStation 5 in Japan has been disappointingly low, and how Sony is thought to be disengaging from the Japanese games industry, but you’d never guess anything was wrong if you were trying to buy a console in Tokyo on Saturday.
Or rather you would know something was wrong, just not anything related to apathy for the PlayStation brand.
According to local reports, as translated by PSU, a shop’s attempt to sell ‘a few hundred’ PlayStation 5 consoles ended in disaster, with shop tills being knocked over and staff having to be evacuated.
Apart from anything else, Japan has just extended a state of emergency due to the coronavirus, but that didn’t stop anyone trying to buy a PlayStation 5 from Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara – one of the biggest electronics stores in the country.
Huge crowds flocked to the store because they’d, unwisely, announced they were selling the consoles on a first come, first served basis instead of via a lottery, as has become standard in Japan.
When things got out of hand the police were called and the crowd dispersed, with the consoles apparently going unsold.
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