Oh, poor baby. You couldn’t get your hands on a $500 gaming console and will have to wait until January.
Right now, social media is full of angry gamers that have been unable to get their hands on a Playstation 5 or XBOX Series X. And there are some that are furious that they haven’t been able to get both.
Let’s read that again. There are gamers that are angry that they can’t spend $1,000 on video games in the middle of a pandemic and during a holiday season where thousands of families won’t even have a Christmas.
Hey, I’ve been gaming longer than most of these cats have been alive. And although I don’t buy at launch anymore (I also can’t afford it and launch machines often come with bugs), I believe rushing for a new console should absolutely be hard. If it were my call, I wouldn’t even have online ordering. You would have to wait outside in the cold for at least 12 hours, just to get turned away for a machine.
But the retail giants are also plenty to blame here. Their online ordering systems are difficult to navigate and convoluted. They’re part of the machine that is fueling an industry that banks billions every year.
And one thing that is disturbing here is that low income gamers are still shut out. Both XBox and Playstation, and even Nintendo and Sega back in the day, used to reduce the costs of their consoles to not only be more inclusive to lower income gamers but to actually get one last push from their older machines. Both parties used to win back then. That didn’t happen this time.
But should you feel sorry for those who get turned away from getting new consoles? Hell no. Their parents probably got turned away and it’s likely their kids will have the same challenges.
It’s a privilege. An extremely fortunate one.