How to get a PS4 today, and our PS4 stock trackerBy
on December 24, 2013 at 11:39 amShare This articleWe’re now six weeks into the PS4’s release, and it’s currently looking like it’ll be the biggest- and fastest-selling console launch of all time. With one million sales in its first 24 hours in North America alone, and then over two million after releasing in Europe, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. While the first shipment of PS4s has well and truly sold out, Sony appears to be slowly replenishing stocks across the US and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, these small batches of PS4 stock are quickly selling out, making it very hard to get your hands on a PS4 — unless, of course, you follow our tips on how to find some PS4 stock!How to buy a PS4 todayTo begin with, the most important thing to remember is that the PS4 is completely sold out at retail stores. In urban areas, Best Buy, Walmart, Toys R Us, Target, and GameStop are out of stock. If you want to find some PS4 stock, your best bet is primary, online retailers, such as Amazon. (In fact, Amazon seems to be by far the best place for locating PS4 stock.)Walmart says it will have a large shipment of PS4s arriving at its stores on December 15, for Christmas buyers. It’s not clear if this is stock that Walmart has kept in reserve, or a shipment from Sony. As far as we can tell, that shipment never appeared. Sony seems to be sending small shipments of stock to retailers, piecemeal — so if you’re lucky you might find a real-world store that has PS4 stock, but you really should call ahead first to avoid disappointment.PS4 launch day at Best Buy in Soho, New York. The five remaining PS4s!If you need a PS4 right now, . The Buy It Now price is now down to around $550 — $150 more than the MSRP, but a lot better than the $650+ that they were originally listed for last month.If you’re willing to wait a while, and you don’t want to hammer F5 , the other option is to use a stock tracking website that automatically alerts you when a website magically finds some PS4 stock.PS4 stock trackerDon’t let the name fool you:
originally started as a website that tracked down the hard-to-find Nintendo Wii, but now it can be used for all sorts of consumer electronics, including the PS4. Basically, you sign up with your email address, add your mobile number (optional but recommended), and then select which products you want to receive alerts for (the PS4). Wiialerts then constantly scans a bunch of stores (Amazon, Walmart, Target, GameStop, Best Buy, etc.) for PS4 stock, and sends you a text when stock arrives.The advantage of this method is that some stores that were previously out of stock of the PS4 occasionally “find” small batches of stock. Earlier today, for example, Best Buy had some PS4s in st if you had been signed up to Wiialerts, you would’ve received an alert and possibly beat the crowd to buy a PS4 from Best Buy. Likewise, the Xbox One was in-stock on Amazon for eight minutes earlier today, but quickly sold out again.How the Wiialerts PS4 stock locator worksThe easiest way to describe the Wiialerts system is a team of robots that are constantly scanning the websites of retailers for some kind of indication that a certain product is in stock — in this case, the PS4. These robots are essentially little software scripts, running on a server somewhere, that constantly (every 60 seconds or so) hit a certain website looking for stock. In some cases this is as simple as scanning the HTML of a web page to look for a certain phrase (“in stock”, “ships immediately”), but there are other signals too — RSS feeds, hidden pages that indicate the imminent arrival of stock, and so on.Once Wiialerts locates some PS4 stock, you are alerted via SMS so that you can make the purchase as quickly as possible. If you’re wondering about Wiialerts’ lack of ads, it pays its bills via affiliate commission — if you buy a PS4 with the URL that Wiialerts sends you, it earns a percentage (but it doesn’t increase the price that you pay for the console).Now read:
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