The headlines have been grim for weeks. Xbox chief Asha Sharma says demand is outstripping supply, Microsoft is urging owners to trade in dusty consoles, Sony is offering $400 for used PS5s, and resellers want up to $1,400 for a PS5 Pro. With Grand Theft Auto 6 launching on 19 November and Black Friday following eight days later, console stock must be dire — right?
Not quite. IGN visited every major online retailer to check availability, and with one notable exception, every current model of every current console is widely available at manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Those MSRPs have climbed in recent years, true — but at this pre-Black Friday, pre-GTA 6 moment, finding a new console at retail price isn’t hard. The exception, though, is a big one.
PS5 Pro: The One Genuine Shortage
New PS5 Pro consoles at the $899.99 MSRP are sold out everywhere — Amazon, Best Buy, Target, GameStop and PlayStation Direct all list the machine as unavailable. Third-party sellers and eBay still have units, but at around $1,400 to $1,500: a markup of several hundred dollars that Sony’s own $400 trade-in offer only underscores.
Supplies are expected to stay tight. Retail analysts point to component shortages — the memory crunch dubbed “RAMageddon” — keeping PS5 Pro stock constrained into 2027, with reseller prices likely to hold firm until supply catches up.
Standard PS5 Models: Widely Available
Everything below the Pro is easy to find. The disc-drive PS5 ($649.99) is in stock at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, GameStop and PlayStation Direct — remarkable considering Sony plans to do away with discs entirely from January 2028. The Digital Edition ($599.99) is available at Best Buy, Target, Walmart and PS Direct, though Amazon and GameStop have run out of new stock.
One warning for bargain hunters: these machines are unlikely to see meaningful discounts during PlayStation’s Black Friday sale this year, precisely because demand ahead of GTA 6 is so strong.
Xbox Series X and S: In Stock Almost Everywhere
The Xbox Series X with disc drive ($799.99) is available at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and GameStop — though notably sold out at Target and Microsoft’s own store, which may be what Sharma was referring to when she warned supply can’t keep up with demand. The digital Series X ($749.99) is stocked everywhere except Xbox.com, while both Series S models — $499.99 with 512GB and $599.99 with 1TB — are available at every major retailer.
The broader picture is murkier. Vice reported one large retail chain couldn’t secure enough PS5 and Xbox Series X units for launch demand, and anonymous sources claim GTA 6 pre-orders on PlayStation are outselling Xbox six to one — a figure Microsoft publicly disputes as unrepresentative of real pre-order data. Xbox’s install base remains the smaller of the two: Capcom revealed only 8.6 per cent of Resident Evil Requiem sales were on Xbox platforms.
Nintendo Switch 2: No Shortage Here Either
Though GTA 6 skips Nintendo’s machine entirely, the Switch 2 ($499.99) remains part of the holiday stock story — and it’s in the same comfortable position as Sony and Microsoft’s standard models, widely available at MSRP across the major retailers. Anyone buying a console this season purely for the Rockstar launch can ignore it; everyone else faces no scarcity.
Buy Now or Wait for Black Friday?
The calendar is the problem. GTA 6 preloads begin 10 November, the game launches on 19 November, and Black Friday lands on 27 November — three demand spikes inside three weeks. Every retailer warning suggests Sony and Microsoft expect a rush, and with memory prices forecast to climb through 2027, further shortages or even price increases are plausible next year.
So the practical advice is blunt: if you need a console for the launch, buy it now, at MSRP, while the shelves are full. Waiting for a discount that may never come — and then competing with launch-day demand — is the riskier gamble. Only the PS5 Pro buyer faces a genuinely hard choice: pay a reseller’s premium or wait out a shortage that could last into 2027. For everyone else, this is the calm before the storm.
