The PS4 Sells Out Faster than Hotcakes at All Major Japanese Retailers; In Most Cases Within Minutes

The PS4 Sells Out Faster than Hotcakes at All Major Japanese Retailers; In Most Cases Within Minutes

Giuseppe Nelva October 4, 2013 7:21 PM EST

This morning between 7 and 7:30 AM local time the floodgates for preorders of the PS4 opened on most Japanese major retail websites. How fast did it sell out? Very, Very Fast.

All the Japanese online stores in which the console has gone up for preorder in the window mentioned above, including Amazon Japan, Yodabashi Camera, Bic Camera, Sofmap, Edion and Rakuten Books ran out of stock extremely fast. Some within mere minutes. Amazon Japan was the one to last the longest, for about 40 minutes.

Both bundles offered, one with a voucher to download Knack, and one with the game and a PlayStation Camera,simply disappeared from the virtual shelves like they never existed.

The screencap you can see below, from Amazon Japan, is just an example of what Japanese gamers who were too late are looking at as I’m writing. They’ll have to rely on the only two retailers that are going to start preorders later, Nojima at 10 AM and Joshin at noon. Most likely their stock is going to evaporate in minutes as well.

Despite the delay of the release to February the 22nd, looks like Japan in still in love with PlayStation.

Update – 9:00 Japan Time: Amazon Japan reopened preorders, probably after receiving a further allocation of units from Sony. We’ll see how long these will last. All other retailers are still completely sold out.

Update – 9:22 Japan Time: The bundle with the camera is now sold out again on Amazon Japan.

Update – 9:26 Japan Time: The box without the camera is gone again too. The second batch lasted less than the first.

Update – 10:00 Japan Time: Nojima opened preorders, and its server imploded.