Buy a PS5 before GTA VI, or wait for Black Friday?

The short answer

If you want to play GTA VI the week it comes out, buy before 19 November and accept that you are paying for the timing. If you can wait eight days, Black Friday is the better bet — but on the retailer’s price, not on the list price, and nobody can promise you a figure in advance.

Two dates, eight days apart

GTA VI releases on Thursday 19 November. Black Friday falls on Friday the 27th. Everything about this decision sits in those eight days.

Demand runs the wrong way for a buyer: a console that a huge release is driving sales of is not a console shops feel pressure to discount. Expect the deals that do appear to be on bundles and on the older stock, not across the board.

What a PS5 lists for right now

Since 2 April 2026 the official US prices are these, each $100 above what they were:

• PS5 with disc drive — $649.99 (was $549.99)
• PS5 Digital Edition — $599.99 (was $499.99)
• PS5 Pro — $899.99

The list price is not what you pay: it is the number discounts are measured from. What it costs today is only on the seller’s page, and it moves week by week — which is why there is no “today’s price” written here. A number frozen in a guide is a number that is wrong by Thursday.

So what actually moves

In 2026 the list price went up, not down. That is the single most useful fact in this decision: waiting has not been rewarded by the manufacturer, only occasionally by retailers.

• Retailer discounts and bundles are where any saving comes from, and they vary shop by shop.
• A bundle is only a deal if you wanted the game in it. Otherwise it is a higher price with a gift attached.
• The strike-through you see in November is only worth what the price under it is. Check the price history before the percentage.

Sources and method

The list prices are Sony’s official US figures effective 2 April 2026, each checked on more than one independent outlet. We have left out the Pro’s previous price because the sources we checked disagree on it, and a guide about honest numbers does not get to round off a disagreement.

There is no five-year chart here. We have one for Italy, built on verified Italian list prices; the same series in dollars we do not have, and drawing it approximately would be inventing exactly the thing this guide teaches you to spot.