📚 Xbox Series X, PS5 fiascos show the problem with digital age preorders

The lack of transparency is bad for consumers, but is probably standard going forward. It feels unlikely that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S preorder launches would both be disasters, but here we are. Immediately following the PS5's official price announcement, Sony tweeted that preorders would be going up the next day, but third-party sites like Walmart decided to publish links live early, causing a lot of confusion. Xbox wasn't much of an improvement despite giving buyers a week's notice, although it still fared overall in allowing preorders to get through. Both were plagued with similar issues. Links would go up and down, stocks would sell out within minutes, and retailers that said they would have links ready to go were late. Sites couldn't handle the traffic, with users getting constant error messages. In the end, whether you got your preorder or not came down to luck. You can argue that this scrambling is what these companies want. It's a way to drum up hype for the new co... ...