Winners and Losers: The PS5 arrives in style, but shipping issues cause havoc

It’s been another doozy of a week in the world of tech with Sony’s much awaited PlayStation 5 games console and AMD’s super swish Radeon RX 6800 graphics card both landing on UK shores.

We’ve also seen huge moves in the world of mobile with Nvidia finding a clever way to sneak its awesome GeForce Now game streaming service onto iOS and Huawei parting ways with its youth focused Honor subsidiary.

But as ever, for the team at Trusted Towers there have been two very clear winners and losers this week.

Winner: The PS5

Sony’s new console is outright awesome. We said as much in our in-depth PS5 review. Which is why this week we were super pleased to see it get the launch it deserved.

First, the company did a bunch of clever marketing, doing things like replacing London Underground signs with the PlayStation’s iconic circle, triangle, square and X button logos and rebranding tube stations with iconic PlayStation franchises.

Then, it delivered one of the best launch line ups we’ve ever seen. Sackboy: A Big Adventure is an adorable platforming romp.  Astro’s Playroom is a perfect launch title that really shows what the new Dualsense can do. Demon’s Souls is one of THE best hardcore action RPGs we’ve reviewed in recent memory. As if that wasn’t enough, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a expansion to one of the best superhero games ever made.

Whatever your gaming poison, the PS5 has you covered. Which is why it easily earns a place as this week’s winner.

Related: Best PS5 games

Loser: Early adopters

While the PS5 is awesome, it’s been fairly tough to get your hands on one. This is on the one hand because there isn’t enough supply to meet demand. That’s no surprise given the supply chain issues dogging pretty much every tech company at the moment.

But the PS5’s launch has suffered even worse setbacks as pretty much every retailer has had an outright mare getting what little stock it has out to customers. First, Currys PC World fudged up its orders, forcing it to cancel some purchases. Then GAME had a similar issue. But to top it all off, there have now been reports of Amazon PS5 preorders arriving on customers’ doors with white goods instead of consoles.

Sony’s not the only one struggling. AMD’s having similar problems with its awesome new Radeon RX 6800 GPU, which scored an astounding 4.5/5 in our review. Despite being awesome, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 before it, the card ran out of stock less than an hour after going on sale, leaving PC gamers in the lurch.

For that reason, early adopters earn a spot as this week’s loser.