Finding a PS4 in stock has continued to be very difficult in the United States, and the PlayStation 4 prices for online retailers such as Amazon are amazingly matching the Xbox One price of $500 even though the official MSRP is $400.
In a related report by The Inquisitr , back near the beginning of the year, Sony claimed that PlayStation 4 availability should pick up as the year went on. The holidays did see the average PS4 price rise to ridiculous heights, but we were expecting this to settle out within weeks. Unfortunately, this did not occur and the average PlayStation 4 “deal” actually became slightly worse .
Still, it is possible to find a PlayStation 4 in stock at a normal price if you’re patient. The best method seems to be to keep checking with your local retailers via the phone. But if you’re looking for a PS4 in stock online, I’ve seen it claimed that if you continuously refresh the product page on Amazon and other sites you’ll sometimes quickly be able to snag a PS4 for $399.99.
Otherwise, if you hop onto the Amazon PlayStation 4 page right now, it’s only available through third parties. As of this writing, the cheapest option for a new PS4 is $517.99 and even the minimum price for a used unit is $503.74. That’s higher than the Xbox One price, and it’s actually possible to get a used Xbone for around $475, including shipping.
The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 eBay auctions are even worse. First of all, there is a lot of fraud with the lower priced auctions because people are literally trying to fool you into buying an empty box. Once again, the going rate seems to be over $500, which makes sense since our previous analysis showed that was the only way to be profitable with a PS4 eBay auction .
Regardless of these difficulties with finding a PlayStation in stock, it’s still outselling the Xbox One by a large amount. Odd enough, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter claims the fact that the Xbone is $100 more expensive on paper is the reason for Sony winning the console war so far:
“Demand would have been higher for the Xbox One than it was, and demand for the PS4 would have been about the same – maybe slightly lower, because some people might have migrated over. I think supply for both consoles would have been about the same. So my guess is the Xbox One would have sold a couple hundred-thousand more and the PS4 would have sold a couple hundred-thousand less. Sony still would have outsold them because they had more supply. And based on what I saw at retail over that six week period [PS4 units] really weren’t in stock for very long, when they were in stock.”
Do you have any tricks for finding a PlayStation 4 in stock?