Earlier this week, Sony went ahead and opened up a small 90s themed PlayStation shop in London and sold 20th Anniversary Edition consoles for as little as £19.94. Some of those people were clearly eager to turn a profit as consoles are now popping up on eBay and going for thousands of pounds.
One listing is offering the limited edition console for £2300 and was bought at the London store on the 10th of December. A second listing is on sale for £1994 and was also bought at Sony's London store. There are only 144 of these consoles in the UK right now so it will be interesting to see if anyone actually lays down this much cash to get one.
Obviously, there's not really anything Sony can do about these auctions but Sony UK Boss, Fergal Gara, does note that they aren't in spirit of the event:
“That's not what we want to see happen”, he told Eurogamer. “It's inevitable some proportion of that will happen, and very hard to prevent it completely. We did think things through. But in each and every case, the way you get hold of one of these consoles requires some fan knowledge, so we're trying to tap into the people who love the brand the most, and put them at an advantage, because they're the people who keep us in business, who inspire this whole 20 year legacy.”
“You can't completely remove it, but that certainly isn't the intention of the exercise at all. It's to honour the fans and having it at such a low price to the dedicated here, it's all but free, but a nice little touch in terms of remembering the launch year.”
Sony will be selling another 800 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 consoles on Monday the 15th of December for £399. As you would expect, we will likely see some of those on eBay as well. Only 12,300 units are going to be sold in total world-wide so these consoles will become highly collectible and inevitably fetch a high price online.
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KitGuru Says: This was bound to happen but it is a shame that those cheap anniversary consoles didn't go to people that actually wanted them. More will be on sale at the normal price next Monday so it might be worth trying to buy one then if you really want one. What do you guys think of the 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 consoles? Would you buy one?
I see plenty of people complaining about selling these as if it doesn’t make them a true Sony fan. Buying one of these, selling it for a massive profit, then using that money to buy a normal PS4 means you’re giving twice as much money to Sony and you’re being smart in the process
I very much doubt that the scalpers are in it to buy a PS4