There was bedridden overnight at a Tokyo store when a new supply of the insufficiently supplied PlayStation 5 arrived. Since its release last November, Sony’s new console has been impossible to find on the borderline around the world, but Japan was at the particularly short end of the stick, with hardware sales lagging even with the launch of the Nintendo Wii U .
However, Kotaku reports that the Yodobashi Camera electronics megastore in Akihabara sold a ton of new systems today – and all hell broke loose. We don’t even have to describe the scenes as you can see them for yourself, courtesy of the video below:
Eventually things got so bad that the police were called and the sale of the system was stopped. So what happened? As already noted, the stock is of course small. But this was made worse by the fact that the Akihabara branch of Yodobashi Camera in question does not require the use of the retailer’s black credit card to purchase hardware – a regulation put in place to thwart scalpers.
In addition, the store was handing out numbered tickets to potential buyers on a first-come, first-served basis. In the past, lotteries were offered where those who called their number were given the option to purchase a system. Obviously, all of these conditions contributed to the scenes you see above.
It’s worth noting that this all happened at a time when the Japanese government introduced a state of emergency due to the ongoing pandemic, and Tokyo is unsurprisingly the most affected city in the country.