Sony Turns to a Lottery to Beat PS5 Pro Scalpers in Japan

Sony is changing how it sells the PS5 Pro in Japan, replacing the first-come, first-served scramble with a lottery on its domestic online store. The system will apply whenever demand for new consoles outstrips the limited supply available.

The reasoning is simple. When a restock lands and sells out in minutes, the buyers who win are often those with bots or the fastest connections, and many of them are resellers who flip the hardware at a markup. A lottery removes the speed advantage. Shoppers enter for a chance to buy, and winners are drawn from the pool rather than the fastest clickers.

The shift comes as supply shortages persist, leaving genuine fans struggling to find a PS5 Pro at the intended price. Sony has not made the console easy to find, and with stock arriving in small batches, each drop has drawn far more interest than there are units to go around.

Lotteries are already a familiar tool in Japan. Retailers and publishers there have long used them for high-demand hardware and limited editions, so the format should be recognizable to local buyers. Sony bringing it to its own store suggests the company sees the old approach as no longer workable for the Pro.

A lottery is not a perfect defense. Determined resellers can still try to enter multiple times, and much depends on how Sony verifies accounts and limits entries. Still, it should make bulk buying harder than an open sale, and it gives ordinary players a fairer shot.

For now, Japanese players hoping for a PS5 Pro will need to watch the PlayStation store for lottery announcements rather than camp out for a restock. Whether the model spreads to other regions remains to be seen.