Amazon Will Let You Buy A PS5 or Xbox If You're Invited

Due to the low supply, getting your hands on an Xbox console or a PS5 is really difficult. Because of this, retailers need to come up with new ways of distributing the supply among the paying customers. According to TechCrunch, Amazon just unveiled a new invite system that will allow certain people to buy one of the consoles.

If this gets your blood boiling, Amazon isn’t the only company that needs to compensate for the high demand and low supply. Walmart has new PS5 consoles in stock, but only people who are subscribed to the Walmart Plus membership can buy one.

Amazon has an invite system for high-demand items

There are a lot of sought-after items that are in short supply due to this global chip shortage. The Sony PS5 and Xbox are prime examples of this. They launched back during a high point in the Coronavirus pandemic to boot, so that didn’t help the situation. A year and a half later, and the situation hasn’t changed much.

Because of the shortages, Amazon has a new method for people to buy the stock. When the user wants to buy a high-demand item, they’ll see a new button in place of the “Add to cart” button. It’ll say “Request Invite”. When they click, they’ll send a request to the company to buy the item. From that point, they’re put onto a waitlist.

When more stock for that item comes in, the user will then get an email reading that they’re invited. According to the screenshot posted, it looks like the users will have a 72-house window to purchase the item. We’re not sure if that’s specific to the item or not. When the user gets the email, they can then go to the page and purchase the item as usual.

This could really help the situation

This will cause people to be upset because of the word “Invite”. However, the invite system could actually help Amazon provide potential customers. Instead of people constantly being hit with the “product unavailable” button, people can actually reserve their spot and be notified when the item is in stock. This is what the company has to do while this chip shortage rages on.