Scalpers who snapped up early-release PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles reportedly made over $28 million ($A37 million) in profits by flogging them at inflated prices online.
According to a report by data engineer Michael Driscoll – who scraped the data of eBay’s sold listings for PS5 and Xbox through to December 1 – more than 60,000 gaming consoles were sold through the online marketplace.
This included 6,863 Xbox Series S consoles, 22,932 Xbox Series X, 7,322 PS5 Digital Editions and 25,642 physical PS5 consoles.
While the Xbox Series S and Series X have the RRP of $A499 and $A749 in Australia, the median selling price for the S console was $665 and the X was $1147.
This means scalpers of Microsoft’s next-generation gaming consoles effectively made $9 million in profit.
Meanwhile, the PS5 Digital Edition (A$599) had a median selling price of $1239, while PS5 (A$749) had a median selling price of $1351, generating $19 million in profits for resellers.
Another online retailer named StockX claims users had resold over 60,000 units of the next-gen consoles in the month following the launch.
StockX economist Jesse Einhorn said almost twice as many PS5 consoles had been resold than Xbox consoles.
The initial stock shortages which plagued Sony and Microsoft during their respective launches has been blamed in part to scalpers who use software to automatically buy the consoles as soon as stock is made available online.
Sony confirmed via Twitter that Aussies and New Zealanders wanting the PlayStation 5 will likely have to wait until 2021 for stock to be replenished.
The Xbox Series X and S have completely run out of stock at most retailers too and stock is expected to arrive in early 2021.
