PS5 madness: videos show Black Friday crowds, shoppers fall to the ground running to GameStop to hang Playstation 5

FORT MYERS, Florida – While Black Friday of 2020 was more docile than its predecessors, some shoppers braved the cold and risked facing crowds amid the COVID-19 pandemic so they could be the first to hook up the all new Playstation 5.

Video taken inside downtown Port Charlotte, near Fort Myers, Fla., Shows customers running toward a GameStop store, some falling to the ground in the middle of the rush.

“The second they opened the doors to the mall,” people were running, said Agata Lendziszewska, who recorded the video.

And social media posts from New York and Georgia to California show potential PS5 buyers lining up.

“You need to relax,” a security guard told a noisy crowd at a GameStop in Irvine, Calif.

A 20-year-old from the California Bay Area is said to have stood in line at his local gambling stop for 36 hours. He was the first person in line and able to pick up one of only two PS5s sold there.

“Really relieving,” Lopez said Friday morning as he left the store, PS5 in hand. “The console itself was good enough already, but now I’m on the news. Even better!”

And amid the growing cases of COVID-19 across the country, a restaurateur who works at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, has taken photos of large crowds of shoppers.

Brian Ingram lamented how busy it was despite his company being forced to take precautions that others don’t

“Hold us accountable for providing a safe space, then shoot those who don’t,” he posted on Facebook.

Earlier this month, customers said they struggled to find PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles online, with many customers saying vendor websites continued to crash.
Many analysts believe Sony and Microsoft have deliberately limited the number of units produced, CNN reported.

Profit margins on the new PS5 and Xbox Series X are likely “slim or even downright in the red,” according to IDC games research director Lewis Ward, so it made sense to set production limits. Sony and Microsoft have likely considered production levels that would not stress manufacturers and the supply chain tremendously and could help them limit revenue losses, he said.

Yet despite the PS5 craze, online shopping on Thanksgiving Day hit a record $ 5.1 billion, up 21% from last year, according to Adobe Analytics.