The Console Embargo Sucks

Unboxing culture is the actual worst. We’ve arrived at this point where watching someone open something is high dollar entertainment. I say that and as you can tell YouTube is giving away my secret that I did in fact watch the iJustine video because I personally found it entertaining and I worry about myself greatly because of that fact. Yesterday was the embargo date for the PS5… but not in any meaningful way. It was the day that those deemed worthy of receiving a press unit in the mail were able to actually open the box and show the contents to the world. Prior to this they were simply able to show off the box that they received and many did just that in reference to other Sony PlayStation boxes.

There is another embargo date on November 6th that actually allows them to talk about the unit, how it plays, the user interface and all of the other things that folks actually care about. What is making this so insufferable is the fact that we just went through something similar with the Microsoft Xbox Series X. When folks got their hands on units initially they were limited in what they could actually show… namely they could really only talk about application start up time improvements. I don’t believe we have actually seen third party footage of anything other than current generation games running on the Xbox hardware.

What multiplies the infuriation of this whole drawn out process is the fact that it is highly unlikely that the majority of folks wanting one will be able to purchase either an Xbox Series X or a Sony PlayStation 5. Unless they are just about to open the floodgates… the units are going to be in very high demand and as a result very short supply. In both cases there was discussion about multiple waves of preorders that as far as I am aware never actually materialized. I would expect there to be some sort of a restock around Thanksgiving/Black Friday and another possibly closer to Christmas but the stock is going to be tight more than likely until well into the new year.

The end result is simply that the TechTubers are being orchestrated by these massive corporations to whip folks into a frenzy… over something that realistically they can’t actually buy. Now please note… I don’t blame the reviewers because they have been given a golden ticket with an expiration date that allows them to draw a whole lot of eyeballs to their channel with something that the masses are interested in. Same is true for all of the Streamers that suddenly switched to Genshin Impact as they were trying to draw in the eyeballs as that game was booming. Who I blame is the console manufacturers because this entire generational rollout has been a mess of playing cat and mouse around releasing details.

All of the information that has been drip fed over the course of the last two quarters… should have come out in a single push around June pending there was actually an E3 this year. I think the last minute nature of everything has doomed this to be a rough launch. I say all that feeling relatively certain that I have a pre-order unit locked in. Even then however I am not 100% certain that I will be getting my shiny new toy in any semblance of the release date. Truth be told there is part of me expecting a refund any day now and a sorrowful message from the retailer telling me that they oversold the available quantity.

We are living in a time of great uncertainty because the world is just burning down around us. I know it is silly to be frustrated over a game console, but that is precisely where we are because for many of us the only thing holding us together are the distractions. I am not sure I would have made it through this year were it not for gaming and my ability to focus on it instead of the asshole in the oval office or the fact that no one seems to take the fact that we are living in the time of a pandemic seriously. If you have made it down this far, I thank you for indulging this rant piece. I am sure I will return to proper content tomorrow.

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