For the past couple of months, PlayStation 4 owners have not been able to purchase a camera from primary retailers. For reasons unknown, major chains such as Walmart, Target and Best Buy have been sold out of the apparently much sought after device for quite some time. This has led to incredible price hiking on Ebay, where the camera (normally retailing for $60) is being sold off for upwards of $100. Naturally, these sellers are getting away with it and actually completing their sales, making the idea of selling one’s camera more appealing than ever.
As recently as yesterday, GameStop finally received more units of the PS4’s camera. The catch is that even GameStop cannot turn its back on a potential profit, and they too have decided to raise their own price on the camera. They are selling the camera for $70, which is only $10 above the standard asking price. GameStop has a history of raising the price on hard-to-find items, famously doing so for rare Wii games such asĀ Metroid Prime Trilogy.
The demand for the PlayStation 4 camera is significant, and it’s only logical that the average consumer and third party retailer would be attempting to take advantage of the situation. However, GameStop, a company that already has a bit of a bad reputation due to the innumerable “bad employee” stories posted around the internet and their extremely low trade-in payouts, should probably try to avoid coming into the spotlight for hiking the price on a rare item. Whether or not this will be remembered as another classic GameStop muck-up has yet to be seen, but you can bet that people who have been waiting for a restock won’t be entirely thrilled.
Do you think this is a scummy practice? Give us your opinion in the comments.