'Um, as a favor, if you happen to purchase a brand new one, please promote your gaming PC to our firm' says Tokyo-based laptop retailer because it presents 'fairly excessive costs'
For those who occur to reside out in Tokyo and end up not utilizing an ageing gaming rig, one firm appears intent on shopping for it off you.
As noticed by Videocardz, Akihabara-based tech store Sofmap not too long ago took to X to share (machine translated) “Gaming PC, even used ones are actually out of inventory proper now”. What follows is an image of only a handful of PCs sat on a couple of cabinets.
“Um, as a favor, if you happen to purchase a brand new one, please promote your gaming PC to our firm…We purchase them again at fairly excessive costs…Whether or not it is a gaming desk or a laptop computer, or perhaps a common non-gaming one, we just about purchase any PC…”
ゲーミングPC、中古も本当に在庫なくて今これあの、お願いなので買い替えたらぜひ弊社にゲーミングPCを売ってください…結構高く買い取っていますので…ゲーミングのデスクでもノートでも、もちろんゲーミングじゃない普通のでもPCなら大体買い取っているので… pic.twitter.com/IinBuGgRV7January 7, 2026
With regards to the availability of PC elements, we’re at the moment in the midst of a significant reminiscence disaster that impacts all the pieces from RAM to storage to GPUs, and that naturally has a knock-on impact on one’s means to purchase rigs. Nonetheless, Japan may be very distinctive in that there are 3 million fewer PC Players than 10 years in the past. The PC gaming market is oddly small, and producers have historically shipped to the nation in restricted portions.
Nonetheless, the financial energy of that market has grown considerably over the past decade in Japan, with it doubling between 2018 and 2021 alone. Whereas a superb chunk of that progress is right down to Covid lockdowns, the market continues to be on the best way up, although the playerbase is smaller. Present stats recommend fewer Japanese PC players are spending greater than in earlier years, however the total pattern suggests that they are completely happy to go huge on {hardware} purchases.
There have been notable adjustments in attitudes in direction of PC gaming within the Japanese post-Darkish Souls, however many components have been at play right here. Valve employees even reported reaching out to the developer behind Recettear, a shopkeeping administration/dungeon crawler, to get it added to {the marketplace}.
That is all to say that the distinctive challenges that include each inventory shortages worldwide and a rising market in Japan are among the contributory components for used gaming PCs to fetch doubtlessly excessive costs. Do not count on to get the identical supply if you happen to lug your outdated clunker right down to your native PC store.
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