FORT MYERS — We’re learning the hottest item by far on the minds of Black Friday shoppers in Southwest Florida are gaming consoles.
We caught up with several people lined up outside the Best Buy on Route 41 Thursday night hoping to get either a Playstation 5 or an XBOX Series X.
The store didn't open until 5:00 a.m. the following morning, and people in line didn’t even know if the store had any consoles in stock. The people we spoke with were just planning to find out when the doors finally opened.
Earlier on Thursday, we did find one store that had 19 Playstations in stock, and the line stretched around the block. The Gamestop on Daniels Pkwy was slammed with people looking for the gaming console, and many of them told us they’ve been trying to buy one for the past year.
Joe Fish said he’s tried buying it online multiple times, but it always sells out before he can get his order in.
"It’s been almost impossible to get a hold of a Playstation 5, so you know I’m on vacation, I figured what’s a few hours of waiting in line to get one you know?” said Fish.
The first two people in line were actually Katasha Hardy and her daughter Melviona Eldemire. They also had been trying to get a console for more than a year.
“We’ve tried, tried, tried Walmart, Best Buy, Target, Amazon and it’s just a failure, so we said we’ll just sit out and we’ll do like everybody else does on Black Friday and we’ll get what we came for," said Hardy.
One of the concerns we’ve been hearing from people like is that when an item is really desired like a Playstation 5, people often buy it in large quantities online in order to re-sell it later, which is why they can be so hard to get.
