The PlayStation 5 30th Anniversary Edition was quickly sold out on most regions, and many fans were dissapointed to see many of the consoles now being re-sold at ridiculous prices on second hand markets.
But in Japan, Sony did introduce a measure to limit scalping, and at least making sure everyone who tried to buy one was a “legit” gamer, even if that measure was also unfair to many people who didn’t meet the requirements.
As spotted by Automaton, whoever wanted to pre-order the new, extremely limited edition console (only 12,300 PS5 Pro manufactures in the whole world, as that was the date the original PlayStation released in December 3, 1994) had to prove they had at least 30 hours of playtime on PS5 or PS4 from the past ten years.
When you apply to the raffle through their official website, you must have a PSN account registered in Japan, with at least 30 hours of playtime between February 2014 (the month PS4 came out in Japan) and September 19, 2024.
This means that potential buyers who never had a PS4 or PS5, but maybe felt nostalgic for the original PlayStation, had no way of buying one of these consoles. A bit of “gatekeeping” that, on the other hand, made it more difficult for scalpers and bots.
We will see how it turns out, as they are also using a lottery systems: if the number of valid pre-order requests is superior to the number of units available, they will raffle the consoles. The requests are open until October 14.