If you're wondering where to buy other in-demand technology products like the PS5, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, and Xbox Series X, you may get lucky with Newegg's new lottery system

Newegg Shuffle promises to open a three-hour window during which prospective buyers can select the products they want from a list as an alternative to the current situation, which sells out as soon as restocking begins At the end of the window, Newegg will randomly select a "winner" and send them an email or Newegg app notification with a link to purchase the product within the two-hour time limit

While Shuffle is not open at the time of this writing, past windows have included most or all of the current big-ticket items that are suffering from either a shortage of inventory, excess demand, or both These include the PS5, Geforce RTX 3080 graphics card, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, and Ryxen 7 5800X PC components were initially only available in bundles with compatible motherboards, Newegg told PCMag that they will also be available as stand-alone components in future Shuffles

In reality, this lottery system does not solve one of the biggest underlying problems of inventory shortages: lack of supply Therefore, one should not expect it to be a miracle solution to the PS5 restocking woes Still, it is a significant improvement in that, unlike the first-come, first-served approach, it is fair to everyone

Because participation is not on a first-come, first-served basis, the scammers and their bots will not have an advantage in each shuffle You can mark down your desired product at any time during the three-hour window, and your chances of actually purchasing the product depend on pure chance Those who use bots to automatically obtain resellable inventory before the average consumer enters their card information cannot leap to the front of the line this way

The main drawback at present is that it is not clear when the new shuffle will take place; Newegg has stated that it wants to tweak the system before starting the next round, and the shuffle page on Newegg's site now has a countdown timer instead of the previously displayed instead of the countdown timer that was previously displayed

Still, if you're struggling to get your hands on a PS5, GeForce RTX 30 series card, or AMD Ryzen 5000 processor, this is definitely worth your attention