PlayStation Japan Has a Playtime Plan To Foil PS5 Pro Scalpers

Almost as soon as the PlayStation 5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition was unveiled, scalpers set to spoil legitimate consumers’ fun by selling their pre-orders online for thousands of dollars. In some territories, pre-orders for this sumptuous Sony console sold out in minutes, many of which were claimed by malicious scalpers.

PlayStation Japan isn’t taking that sitting down, though. If you want to pre-order a PlayStation 5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition over there, you’ll need to meet some critical criteria.

Beat Back the Scalpers

Whenever something desirable is revealed in the gaming world, scalpers rush to power up their bots and join queues on every platform possible to secure pre-orders. They’ll then turn those pre-orders – or outright purchases – into money-making machines on platforms like eBay, charging two, three, or four times the price and trapping desperate, legitimate users.

Automaton recently spotted that the PlayStation Japan team has implemented a few base requirements for users looking to pre-order the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition.

Firstly, you’ll need to have a PSN account registered in Japan, and that account will need to have at least 30 hours of playtime recorded on any PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 game between February 2014 and September 2024.

It’s a minor blocker, but it should be enough to prevent many of the run-of-the-mill scalpers with absolutely no interest in what they’re buying. It means that pre-orders for the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition in Japan are more likely to be reserved for legitimate gamers interested in securing the console because they’re fans.

It’s almost moot now, given how rapidly the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition sold out worldwide, but it’s good to see that at least one region is aware of the threat presented by scalpers.

Did you manage to secure a pre-order for this gorgeous console? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum.

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