Verified September 14, 2026. Retailer pricing, sale dates, and product availability can still shift before November 27 — check the linked official sources before you buy.
Sony raised PS5 prices in April. Microsoft raised Xbox prices in August. Nintendo raised Switch 2 prices in September. That’s three console makers hiking prices in the same calendar year Black Friday is supposed to cut them — and it’s not a coincidence. A global memory shortage is the reason, and it’s also the reason this year’s hardware discounts will be shallower than what you saw in 2025. Games, accessories, and PC peripherals are a different story. Here’s what’s actually worth waiting for, what isn’t, and how to get ready before November 27.
Quick Start: What to Do Before November 27
Do these six things now, in this order, and you’ll be ready whether you’re buying a console, a GPU, or just a stack of games:
- Check the price history on anything you’re eyeing — a tracker (CamelCamelCamel for Amazon, or a store-specific price-history tool) tells you whether a “Black Friday deal” is actually below what it sold for in July or August.
- Set a hard budget per category — hardware, games, accessories — before deals start, since doorbuster urgency is designed to blow past whatever you’d planned to spend.
- Check trade-in value now, not on November 27, since trade-in credit often drops once a retailer’s holiday device intake floods in.
- Look at financing terms if you’re buying a console or a build — Microsoft’s own 0% APR financing for up to 12 months [3] is a genuinely useful tool this year given how much sticker prices moved.
- Confirm your GPU/PC part’s actual current price — several 2026 GPUs have barely moved off MSRP for months, so “Black Friday price” may just be the price you can already get today.
- Decide if you’re buying GTA 6 or hardware — you’ll see why that’s a real trade-off for retailers this year in the section below.
Why Black Friday 2026 Actually Looks Different This Year
The short version: a global memory shortage made consoles and PC components more expensive to build in 2026, and all three console makers passed that cost onto shoppers well before the holidays arrived. That changes what “Black Friday deal” even means this year.
Start with the hikes themselves. Sony raised PS5 pricing on April 2, citing “continued pressures in the global economic landscape” — disc console from $549.99 to $649.99, Digital Edition to $599.99, PS5 Pro to $899.99, even the PlayStation Portal jumped $50 to $249.99 [2]. Microsoft followed on August 1, raising Xbox Series X to $799.99 and Series S to $499.99, and discontinuing the 2TB Series X model entirely. Xbox’s own announcement didn’t hedge on why: “console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027” — and noted that consoles are “typically not sold at a profit, but instead for less than they cost to make” [3]. Nintendo followed on September 1, moving the Switch 2 from $449.99 to $499.99 for the same reason, in slightly more diplomatic language [1].
The mechanism behind all three is the same, and it’s bigger than any one company’s pricing strategy. TrendForce’s own Q1 2026 industry report shows conventional DRAM contract prices rose 93 to 98 percent quarter-over-quarter — the memory sector’s revenue jumped 81 percent QoQ to $97 billion in a single quarter [4]. The cause is AI infrastructure: as cloud providers shifted from training large models to running them (inference), they redirected demand from specialized AI memory toward the same general-purpose server memory that competes with PC and console supply. TrendForce was still forecasting another 58 to 63 percent QoQ increase for Q2 2026 as suppliers kept prioritizing high-capacity server orders over consumer allocation [4]. None of that reverses by November.
What that means in practice: don’t expect the kind of console discount you saw in 2025. Last Black Friday, before any of these hikes, a PS5 dropped from $549.99 to roughly $449 at Amazon — about $100 off, an 18 percent cut [8]. Retailers aren’t likely to eat that same dollar amount on a console that now costs Sony more to make.
| Console | Nov 2025 Black Friday Price | Current 2026 MSRP | Realistic Nov 2026 Expectation |
|---|---|---|---|
| PS5 (disc) | ~$449 (from $549.99) | $649.99 | Small cut or bundle value, unlikely to approach last year’s dollar discount |
| Xbox Series X | $0 off — held at full $649.99, Microsoft discounted games and accessories instead [10] | $799.99 | A repeat of zero console discount is very plausible — Microsoft didn’t cut hardware pricing even before this year’s hike |
| Switch 2 | No discount (new hardware) | $499.99 | Game bundles (like the Mario Kart World pairing) over a console price cut |
The takeaway isn’t “skip Black Friday for hardware.” It’s that a bundle beating the standalone price, or genuinely useful financing, is now the realistic best case — not a deep straight-up price cut.
The GTA 6 Collision: Nov 19, Eight Days Before Black Friday
GTA 6 launches November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only, priced at $79.99 standard / $99.99 Ultimate Edition [5][6]. There’s still no PC version, and Rockstar hasn’t given one a release window. That launch lands eight days before Black Friday — close enough that it changes retailer incentives.
Console makers that just raised prices have very little reason to also discount the hardware people are about to buy specifically to play the biggest release of the year. Expect the headline PlayStation and Xbox offers to be GTA 6 console bundles rather than standalone price drops — the same pattern GTA 6-adjacent retail listings were already leaning toward as far back as the game’s June price reveal. If you already own a PS5 or Xbox Series X|S, that collision doesn’t affect you; if you’re buying a console specifically to play GTA 6 at launch, expect to pay close to full price and get a bundled copy of the game as your actual discount.
On PC, the picture is different again: Steam moved its Autumn Sale to October 1-8, weeks before Black Friday, and there’s no coordinated storewide Steam sale within weeks of Black Friday on the 2026 calendar at all — late-November discounting runs through Steam’s Special Offers hub with individual publishers setting their own timing [7]. If you’re shopping for PC games specifically, don’t wait for a Black Friday-branded Steam event that isn’t happening this year; check our GTA 6 release hub for what’s actually confirmed and treat Black Friday PC pricing as publisher-by-publisher, not a single event.
What’s Actually Likely to Drop This Year
Not everything is affected by the memory shortage the same way. Games and accessories run on different margins than the silicon inside a console or a graphics card.
| Category | Realistic 2026 Discount | Why |
|---|---|---|
| First-party console games | 30-50% off, deeper on older titles | Software margins aren’t touched by the memory shortage; 2025’s cuts (Elden Ring to $15, FF7 Rebirth to $30) are a fair baseline [8] |
| Controllers & accessories | 20-35% off | Same pattern as 2025 (DualSense to $55, Xbox controllers to $40) — accessory margins aren’t memory-bound [8] |
| GPUs (RTX 50-series, RX 9000-series) | Flat to modest, avoid expecting MSRP-plus cuts | GPUs carry GDDR memory directly, so the DRAM shortage hits them at the component level, not just around them |
| Monitors | $100-$230 off on OLED panels | Best Buy’s July 2026 preview event already showed real cuts here (a 280Hz OLED panel at $470, down from $700) [9] |
| Prebuilt gaming PCs | 10-33% off, biggest cuts on older GPU generations | Retailers move older-spec inventory aggressively; the July preview event already discounted an RTX 5060 Ti build by $280 [9] |
| Consoles (standalone) | Modest at best; bundles are the real deal | Just raised prices in the same year — see the section above |
If you’re assembling or upgrading a PC rather than buying prebuilt, our $700 PC build guide is worth revisiting before Black Friday — it’ll tell you whether a “deal” component is actually below what a sensible build already costs today.
Which Black Friday Shopper Are You?
The right move depends heavily on what you’re actually buying this year:
| Shopper Type | Priority |
|---|---|
| Need a console now (broken/first-time buyer) | Buy the best bundle, not the best standalone discount — a bundle beating MSRP is this year’s real win, since standalone price cuts will be thin. |
| Already own a console, just want games | Ignore hardware deals entirely and focus on the 30-50% software cuts — this is the one category the memory shortage doesn’t touch. |
| Building or upgrading a PC | Compare against current (not pre-Black-Friday) pricing before assuming a discount is real — GPU prices have been flatter for months than in past years, so the pre-sale “was” price can be inflated. |
| Buying for the whole household | Split the timing: grab game deals as soon as they appear (they won’t get much deeper), but hold hardware decisions until closer to November 27 in case a bundle beats a standalone offer. |
How to Prep (Beyond Just Waiting)
I’ve tracked SBG’s own hardware price coverage across the last few Black Fridays, and the single biggest mistake shoppers make isn’t missing a deal — it’s assuming a discount is real without checking what the item cost a month earlier. That habit matters more this year than any past one, because retailers have every incentive to mark prices up in October specifically to “discount” them back to a normal price in November.
- Use a price-history tool before every purchase, not just on the big-ticket items — accessories get inflated pre-Black-Friday too.
- Take Microsoft’s financing seriously if you’re buying an Xbox — 0% APR over 12 months on a $799.99 console is a real way to soften this year’s price hike without waiting on a discount that might not come [3].
- Check certified-refurbished options — Microsoft’s own refurbished program offers up to $100 off MSRP, which on a $799.99 Series X is a bigger cut than most standalone Black Friday console deals are likely to be [3].
- Don’t assume Black Friday is the lowest price of the year — several 2025 examples (Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II) hit their all-time-low price on Black Friday, but plenty of others get cheaper again around Christmas or a publisher’s own sale later [8].
- If you’re PC gaming, watch publisher storefronts individually this year rather than waiting for one big Steam event — there isn’t one scheduled [7].
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I wait for Black Friday to buy a PS5 or Xbox?
Only if you’re comparing bundle value, not hoping for a standalone price cut. Sony and Microsoft both raised prices this year specifically because component costs rose, which is the opposite of the condition that produces a deep holiday discount — don’t expect 2025-level dollar savings on hardware that costs more to make than it did last November.
Will GPU prices actually drop for Black Friday 2026?
Don’t count on it. GPUs use the same memory that’s driving console prices up, so the shortage hits them directly rather than just raising the machines around them. If a GPU is already close to its lowest price in the last two months, that’s closer to reality than waiting for a Black Friday-specific cut.
Is it worth buying a console just to get GTA 6 cheaper?
Only if the bundle price beats buying the console and the game separately at their normal prices — do that math before assuming a “GTA 6 bundle” is automatically a deal. Retailers have every incentive to bundle a hyped, non-discounted game with hardware that just got more expensive, since it lets them advertise a bundle without actually cutting the console price.
Why isn’t there a Steam Black Friday sale this year?
Valve moved the Autumn Sale to October 1-8 for 2026, spacing storewide sales more evenly across the year instead of clustering one around Thanksgiving. That doesn’t mean PC games won’t be discounted in late November — it means the discounts will come from individual publishers through Steam’s Special Offers hub rather than one coordinated event, so check specific titles rather than waiting for a single sale banner.
Sources
- Nintendo. Price Revision for Nintendo Switch 2 System. Nintendo Official Site
- GameInformer. Sony Announces PlayStation 5 and Portal Price Increases. GameInformer
- Xbox. Updated Xbox Console Prices. Xbox Wire
- TrendForce. Rapid Contract Price Surge Drives 1Q26 DRAM Industry Up 81% QoQ. TrendForce Press Center
- GTA6Tricks. GTA 6 Price: Standard & Ultimate Edition Costs. GTA6Tricks
- Recharge. GTA 6 Release Date: 19 November 2026, Price & Platforms. Recharge
- CoinGate. When Is the Next Steam Sale? Every Confirmed 2026 Date. CoinGate
- Engadget. The Best Black Friday Gaming Deals for 2025 Still Available. Engadget
- 9to5Toys. Best Buy Black Friday in July Sale PC Gaming Deals Now Live. 9to5Toys
- GameFragger. Are There Any Xbox Series X|S Black Friday 2025 Console Deals? GameFragger
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.