PS5 goes on sale in US, Japan and other countries – but stock is difficult to find

(PlayStation)

The PlayStation 5 has gone on sale – if you can actually find one to buy.

The consoles are now available in the US, Japan and select other countries. The release date in the rest of the world will arrive on 19 November.

But despite the release date arriving, almost everyone who will receive a console will have pre-ordered one during a frenzied process in September. After those pre-orders opened, they very quickly sold out – forcing Sony to apologise for the stock issues and promise that more would be coming out through the year.

The Sony website did not appear to be able to cope with the demand, and went down. Having previously offered a queuing system so that people could wait for a chance to buy the console, visiting the page on Thursday morning showed only a warning: “We are having trouble with the server. Please try again later".

While some retailers did appear to be gearing up to offer limited stock of the PS5 on release day, many were sold out with no clear indication of when new stock would be arriving.

In the US, GameStop had offered some bundles, but its website had broken too and did not appear to have stock when it was working.

Target appeared to have some stock in specific locations. At the time of publication, some of the normal consoles were available for delivery, but the all-digital version was sold out.

Walmart indicated that it would be making consoles available throughout the day, at midday, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm eastern time. They could be found on its website.

The stock shortages were prevalent in both the digital and normal version of the console. As with most new console launches, the PS5 is mostly not being offered in bundles, but rather on its own and only with one controller.

The 12 November release date covered the US, Japan, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. Almost every other country will get it a week later, though China is “still under exploration and will be announced at a later date”, Sony said.

The Xbox Series X and S – which were released everywhere on 10 November – are also being struck by stock shortages. Those have not apparently eased up, but Microsoft has committed to make more consoles available.