【Risa Sakamoto Archives】

As anyone who tried to pre-order a PlayStation 5 surely knows by now: It was a bit of a mess.

Sony revealed on Risa Sakamoto ArchivesWednesday that its upcoming next-generation gaming console will hit stores on Nov. 12. It was a fine presentation, filled with looks at new games and confirmation of the PS5's pricing – $499 for the standard version and $399 for one without a disc drive.

Still, a few notable things were missing. Some of the key games lacked release dates that were later confirmed after the presentation. And more importantly, there was no discussion at all about pre-orders. Nonetheless, some retailers started up their own pre-orders almost immediately. And of course, chaos ensued.

Lots of people got shut out of buying a console all together. The cheaper "Digital Edition" seemed to disappear faster, but more generally, the day or so after Sony's reveal was marked by chaos and confusion among PlayStation fans who just wanted a chance to Sony a minimum of $400.

Speaking anecdotally, I tried Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and Amazon. I also signed up for Sony's in-house pre-order program. Nothing doing at any of them. Even when the store pages did load, they were beset by the kinds of technical issues and slowdowns you tend to encounter when a site is dealing with out-of-the-ordinary traffic.

Sony remained quiet through it all, until finally speaking up on Saturday in a frank tweet accepting blame for the pre-order dust-up.

"Let's be honest: PS5 preorders could have been a lot smoother. We truly apologize for that," the tweet begins. The rest promises that more PS5 consoles will soon be released for pre-order, adding that "retailers will share more details." Sony ends the message with a promise that supply availability will continue to improve through the end of 2020.

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These are just words, of course. In the absence of any specifics from Sony, which shunts that responsibility over to retailers, we're stuck waiting until interests other than Sony describe their PlayStation 5 pre-order offerings.

Still, this is no doubt an encouraging development for everyone who tried and failed to pre-order a PS5. It's good to see Sony acknowledging the screw-up without any equivocation. Just keep checking in on the various pre-order options that are out there, which you can of course find gathered into one place here on Mashable!

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