The race to buy the next-gen consoles PS5 and Xbox Series X has left the field open to scammers: here’s how much they earned from inflated prices on eBay
In November, the long-awaited next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft arrived on the market. Many people have tried to buy the new PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, but have also fallen into the trap of fraudsters who have taken advantage of the high demand, earning millions of dollars.
Some people have pre-ordered a next-gen console and then resold it at double or triple its original price, betting on the few stocks released by Sony and Microsoft that were sold out in a few hours. Who instead has put on sale on eBay only the picture of the PS5 at the price of the console and who still has invented fake online shops to sell them, without ever having had one available. According to data retrieved by Micheal Driscoll of the dev.to community from eBay, scammers earned a total of about $58 million with the inflated prices of PS5 and Xbox Series X.
PS5, how much did the scammers earn
Data engineer Driscoll on the dev.to site published a report based on eBay data on the inflated price sale of PS5, both standard and Digital versions. The original price of PS5 standard is 499 euros, while for PS5 Digital Edition is 399 euros.
According to Driscoll’s estimates, the standard version of PS5, which comes with a Blu-Ray optical drive, was resold online at prices increased by up to 300%, for a total of 27.537,790 dollars, against an increase of up to 200% for the prices of Ps5 Digital Edition, for a total of 7,215,539 dollars.
On eBay alone, more than 32 thousand PS5s have been sold, for a total of almost 35 million dollars in earnings by the scammers. Data that, reiterates Driscoll, does not take into account all the other online shops and sellers at inflated prices outside eBay.
Xbox, how much did the scammers earn
For Xbox Series S and X the discourse of sales at inflated prices is similar to that of PS5. The selling price of Xbox Series X is 499 euros, while the low-cost version Xbox Series S is sold by Microsoft at 300 euros.
Driscoll’s data always refer to sales on eBay and do not take into account other online shops, but they are still impressive. Prices, compared to those of the PS5 were less inflated, with the two types of Xbox sold for just under twice their value.
In total, just under 30 thousand next-gen consoles from Microsoft were reported sold for a total of over $23.5 million: $3,533,691 for the Xbox Series S and $20,052,783 for the Xbox Series X, respectively.