adjl posted...
The problem is drawing a line between legitimate resale (which constitutes a substantial majority of retail commerce; most products are not purchased directly from the supplier) and scalping. A retail licensing system may seem like a solution at a quick glance, but in practice it wouldn't be that hard for somebody planning on large-scale scalping (large-scale scalpers generally being more of a problem than individuals who buy 2-3 extras and resell them) to just get a business license with which to do so, and that would prohibit more legitimate impromptu resale ideas like buying a bunch of bottled water from Costco and selling it at a markup to people lining up ahead of a concert or something like that. It's a simple enough concept, but the reality of turning it into an actual legal policy gets pretty complex (to say nothing of the fact that a lot of people don't actually see a problem with it).
Anti-scalping measures have to come from retailers/suppliers. They're pretty easy to enforce there, like limiting purchases to one or two per customer/IP address/shipping address/credit card, but there isn't a lot of incentive for them to do so because they make the same amount of money if scalpers buy every console for three months as if legitimate customers do. The potential problem arises if scalpers have hoarded so much of the inventory that game sales suffer for it (particularly where Playstation/Xbox systems are sold at a loss and rely on game sales to make up for it), but generally speaking scalpers' inventories usually make their way to actual customers fairly shortly after purchase, so that problem fixes itself.
Make it a law so the retailers have to do that policy.
Also how much do you think it will cost? I'm glad I didn't get TotK now.