Pre-orders for the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition are finally live in Japan, but there's a unique restriction that other regions didn't have.
As reported by VGC, you need at least 30 hours logged on PS4 or PS5 over the last ten years with a registered PSN account.
In other regions like the UK and US, scalping was a huge issue. Entire anniversary bundles were immediately listed on eBay for as much as $10,000 as pre-orders sold out within mere hours.
One user even posted a direct warning under the guise of selling such a bundle, threatening to steal consoles from scalpers before they're ever dispatched. Clearly, frustration around scalping is at a boiling point, but Japan might have a winning strategy on its hand.
Yet another big product launch brought to its knees by scalpers.
By asking people to use a registered account to prove that they are genuine PlayStation users, Sony is putting a hurdle between idealistic buyers, who are interested only in turning a quick profit, and genuine customers. Of course, there will be scalpers who also play on the console, but it should prevent the swarm of bots from automatically...