The PS5 preorders have been happening since Walmart opened the floodgates a few hours after the
PS5 Showcase event gave us the price and release date.
Since then, PS5 preorders at GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon and more have come and gone in a flash. Walmart offered another chance to snag a PS5 or PS5 Digital preorder at 9 PM ET on September 17, and the entire restock was claimed in just 2 minutes.
It looks pretty daunting if you haven’t yet secured your PS5 preorder, but fret not! There are a few things you can do to prepare yourself for the next retailer restock, should there be one. I’ve put together this little guide to help maximize your chances of securing that precious, precious PS5.
How to Increase Your Chances of Getting a PS5 Preorder
Create Accounts at Retailers
The problem with PS5 preorders is they sell out in mere minutes, sometimes seconds. Lots of people following the IGNDeals Twitter account said by the time they got to the checkout with their PS5, it was already sold out. You can save yourself a few precious seconds by signing up for an account ahead of time with retailers.
Signing up for an account is free at pretty much all the places carrying the PS5, and it saves you from having to enter in your address, credit card, billing address and whatever else they require during the frantic checkout process. You just log in, hit “Check Out,” and you’re off to the races.
Note: make sure you’re logged in before the preorders go up. I ran into a snag trying to log-in to my Walmart account when they first went up on Wednesday, due to the massive traffic influx.
Here are the retailers with (possible) PS5 preorders with free account sign-ups:
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Make Sure You Have the Cash In Your Account to Cover It
Amazon is pretty famous for its policy of not charging your account until the item ships. This means you can easily claim a preorder on just about anything even if you don’t have the money at your disposal. I don’t recommend using Amazon preordering as a modern layaway program, but lots of people preorder there simply because it gives them some extra time to beef up their bank accounts.
However, other places like Walmart and Best Buy DO charge you when you make the purchase. Or at least, they put a hold on the full amount for a few days before releasing it, only to charge the full amount when the item ships. That means if you don’t have the cash in your account, or don’t have a credit card, you won’t be able to secure your PS5 preorder.
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Don’t Hold Out for the PS5 Digital (If Possible)
This one sounds weird, but you have to trust me on this. Looking at our own data, and data from other sources like CheapyD on Twitter, there just aren’t many PS5 Digital consoles available for purchase. In the CheapyD tweet, you can see only 0.2% of orders came through for the Digital edition. In our poll (which you can see further down,) of the of respondents who did score a preorder, only 1/6th landed the digital. It’s not because the $499 PS5 is that much more popular: it’s just the PS5 Digital is so incredibly limited in available stock.
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Based purely on anecdotal evidence and reading peoples’ replies on the IGNDeals Twitter, the Digital version is the one console people want most of all. But if you can swing the extra $100, and you absolutely want to bring home a PS5 this November, my advice is don’t even waste your time trying to preorder the digital version.
This is probably my most controversial piece of PS5 preorder advice, so if you feel lucky, by all means go for that Digital! Just know, from the data we can see, it looks like it’s a long-shot.
Follow IGNDeals on Twitter
If you aren’t already, you can join the almost 30,000 new people who’ve followed the IGNDeals Twitter since Wednesday. It seems like people are pretty hungry for PS5 alerts. You can also bookmark our PS5 preorder page, which is updated as soon as new PS5 preorders become available.
Since I’m trying to look out for your best interests, after you follow IGNDeals, maybe follow @Wario64 and @videogamedeals to maximize your chances of seeing an in-stock PS5 preorder alert.
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Prepare to be Disappointed
After you’ve hunkered down and prepared for another wave of PS5 preorders, my last bit of advice is to work on accepting the fact you might not see one in the wild. However, the good news is Sony said there will be more PS5s at launch than there were PS4 consoles during its launch. That gives you a better shot of picking one up on PS5 launch day, November 12. Walmart has already said it will have them in its stores on launch, ready for your excited hands, rather than do an in-store preorder event.
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We don’t know when PS5 preorders will go online again. We don’t even know IF we’ll see more availability. Amazon never even officially posted PS5 preorders (there was a working back-end link that has since been taken down), and Best Buy was plagued with troubles. Walmart offered a second round yesterday, and Sam’s Club also came out of left field with a preorder window.
Keep watching Twitter and hoping for the best, but prepare yourself for the very real possibility you may be standing in line on November 12.
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Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. Find him on Instagram at sethgmacy.
