PlayStation 5 restocks have — predictably — come and disappeared in minutes. India pre-orders for the PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition went live at 12pm noon on Wednesday, June 23, and all the stock was gone under a minute on most websites. Even Amazon had trouble this time around, with its site throwing up an error page: “It’s rush hour and traffic is piling up on that page. Please try again in a short while.” Flipkart went from “coming soon” to “sold out” even before we hit 12pm, just like it happened the previous two times. Croma left me at a blank white checkout page. As always, Games The Shop performed the worst; it temporarily went down 20 minutes before pre-orders even began, struggled to load since, and switched to “service is unavailable” prior to 12pm.
Its site miraculously did briefly return after 12pm, but the “add to cart” button wouldn’t work. But I never even spotted the buy button on Prepaid Gamer Card. And as for Sony Center, the PS5 Digital Edition page reverted to a “404 Not Found” error which is not something that anyone wants to see. How do you do it, ShopAtSC? The Blu-ray-equipped PS5 page was still up, but it was out of stock within seconds. Amazon, suffering from errors, went back to “currently unavailable” by 12:05pm. Croma, Reliance Digital were out of stock even before that. If you managed to get to the complete order page on Amazon, Croma, Flipkart, or Reliance Digital, let me know in the comments below.
PlayStation 5 Review: New Era, Half Jump
At this point, it’s the same story over and over. Once again, the situation was indicative of the fact that Sony continues to bring in very few PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition units into India despite repeatedly witnessing staggering demand. On top of that, none of India’s online retailing giants can build a website that can withstand the PS5 load. And with demand outpacing supply globally into 2022, the situation isn’t going to get better anytime soon. This was only the second pre-order phase for PS5 Digital Edition, and the fourth for the PS5. There’s no date on when the next round of PS5 India pre-orders will happen, but given the monthly cadence for the past two months, hopefully there will be at least one in July.
The June PS5 India pre-orders will begin shipping July 3, according to Sony Center. Expect the others — Amazon, Croma, Flipkart, Games The Shop, Prepaid Gamer Card, Reliance Digital, and Vijay Sales — to ship PS5 pre-orders from July 3 as well. Croma said it will deliver by July 8. Of course, the delivery date will also depend on any local restrictions on non-essential items, and if retailers take in more bookings than they can fulfill. I was unable to get a shipping estimate from the others, so please let me know in the comments below if you managed to successfully pre-order a PS5.
All the PS5 restock seems to be gone for now, but you can keep an eye on the eight aforementioned websites and register for notifications, if you like. You might have better luck checking with a game store near you though — if they are open. Sony India has also set up a helpline at 1800-103-7799 to help PlayStation fans find local retailers across India. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, some game stores might not be able to service you depending on restrictions imposed where you live.
PS5 vs Xbox Series X: Which is the best “next-gen” console in India? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.