I don't want to brag, but I was able to get my PS5 without having to get up early to see if Amazon had a new unit in stock or being glued to the PS5 restock tracker for the latest news. In fact, my method was so easy that I forgot what I was doing halfway through.

To not keep you in suspense for too long, my trick was to win a drawing for a PS5 Priority Pass held by Currys PC World, an electronics retailer in the UK. In other words, this was not a secret, guaranteed trick to get ahead of the millions of gamers who wanted the console. But even ignoring the fact that I got lucky, I would argue that, at least for certain types of buyers, this is an underrated way to get a PS5.

Earlier this year, I had decided to purchase a PS5 in time for "Ratchet & Clank": that is, I had plenty of time before the June release date and was lucky enough to find a PS5 in stock. Unfortunately, after a month of struggling, I gave up. Waking up in the morning and checking out what's new in the big UK game stores and department stores, as well as regularly checking Twitter for the latest news, soon became tiring.

So in February, I settled for entering the lottery for a PS5 VIP pass in Calais and leaving it at that. Sure, I still felt the pressure to get the console within the deadline I had set for myself, but I think we can all agree that as much as we all love games, they are not worth the headache. Entering a lottery like this means that while I'll still be picking chestnuts out of the fire to buy a PS5, I can take a break to get my head out of the sand.

Curry's does not give odds on how likely you are to win the drawing. Nor does it say how many gaming consoles it will offer with each set of ballots, but perhaps it is best not to know how small one's chances are. The only requirements are that you must live in the UK, be at least 16 years old, and that you can only apply once.

In the unlikely event that you do win, the process of getting a PS5 is more complicated than you might imagine. After receiving an email informing you that you have won the lottery, you have 72 hours to enter the code in a special area of Curry's site to confirm that you are still interested. A few days later, you get a call to confirm your address and accessories, then another call a few days after that to process payment, and finally a notification of delivery. In total, it took about 10 days from the time I was notified that I had won the lottery until the game console actually arrived. Incidentally, it had been about two and a half months since I applied for the lottery.

Aside from Curry's, the only other UK online store offering PS5 or Xbox Series X ballots is Box. Unfortunately, there is no indication that any major U.S. retailers are doing the same. Perhaps Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and others need to be persuaded to follow the example of UK retailers.

The major drawback of trusting the lottery instead of restocking information is that if you can guarantee that you will be ready to hit the buy button online when the new console appears, you can get your PS5 much sooner than if you wait and hope for the next lottery. However, this more hands-on approach, while thrilling, is not always as probable as it sounds.

If you are finding it difficult to get your hands on a PS5 and simply cannot accept that it is not in stock, participating in such a lottery (if it is held by a trusted retailer) is a good middle ground. On that note, I wish you luck and recommend taking a break from the rush of inventory updates every once in a while to keep things in perspective.