The PS5 is a new gaming console that was released on Nov. 12 and gained the attention of many scalpers over online stores such as Gamestop and Walmart.

Scalpers are third party groups who buy out popular products like the PS5 and sell them for higher prices. These scalpers were also able to set up bots, which are programs run on computers that automatically buy items on the seller’s sites. These bots ended up buying up all the PS5s before anyone in the general public could get them, giving these third party vendors the ability to sell them at much higher prices.

“The way they sell it you can’t get it anywhere besides a third party unless you’re lucky,” senior Brenden Tolle said. Tolle had to pay $300 more than the original of the PS5 on the day of its release as a result of a third party.

The PS5’s specs have been publicly released and compared to their previous generation PS4. According to Sony, the PS5 specs are impressive with, “CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz with SMT (variable frequency) vs 8x Jaguar Cores at 1.6Ghz on PS4, RAM: 16GB GDDR6/256-bit vs 8GB GDDR5 and 256-bit on PS4.”  This new unit also packs a large internal storage with 825 GB in the PS5 versus 500 on the PS4.

Objectively this makes the PS5 superior to its past console the PS4, but there are still other consoles and PCs. The value for consumers is whether this new system is worth the inflated pricing from these scalpers.

“The PS5 costs $500 and the scalpers are selling it from $900-$1100” technology enthusiast and junior Nate Stein said. “A computer around that price has a AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6GHz, 16GB DDR4, 240GB SSD+2TB HDD, 8GB GeForce RTX 2060 Super in it. These parts are comparable in CPU and depending on the game GPU. The PS5 does have a faster SSD but less storage. The PS5 would be better just for gaming, but a PC would be better if you want to do other things that require a CPU and GPU.”  

With the current average cost of a PS5 through third party vendors being on average $800, gamers have to decide if the current inflated pricing is worth the extra cost.

“It’s never ok to buy from scalpers,” Stein said. “Just be patient and wait until you can buy a PS5 from the store. It will only be a few months.”

*Correction on Dec. 21.  Senior Brenden Tolle was described as a junior, which was incorrect.