Walmart appears to finally be using waiting rooms for PlayStation 5 sales

If you’ve attempted to get a Sony PlayStation 5 (and we’re betting most of you have), you’ve likely faced site crashes, mysteriously emptied carts, and ten-second sellouts. If you’ve tried to buy a PS5 from Walmart, you likely didn’t even get that far: you just saw the “Oh deer” page and cried.

Well, that might not be the case going forward. Today, during a PlayStation 5 Walmart sale in Canada, the retail giant’s online portal used a crude waiting room for the drop. This is the first time of which we’re aware that the company didn’t just throw the consoles up for sale and let whatever happens to happen.

Waiting rooms are one of the best ways to fight bot sales. That’s probably the biggest problem standing in the way of people being able to buy a PS5. Since Walmart announces the time and date for its PS5 drops, bots can quickly sweep in and grab all the stock. That stock then ends up on the resale market for triple the retail price.

PlayStation 5 Walmart waiting rooms in the US?

To be clear, this waiting room we witnessed was only at the Canadian version of the Walmart website. We haven’t seen the US version use a waiting room before. However, the use of a waiting room at Walmart.ca could mean that the retailer might use a similar system at Walmart.com next time. In other words, you might have a better chance of nabbing a PS5 from Walmart than you have so far.

Best of luck out there!