PlayStation and Xbox Black Friday deals in South Africa

The South African distributors of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox gaming consoles have confirmed that both platforms will offer Black Friday deals this year.

PlayStation distributor Gamefinity told MyBroadband that discounts on PlayStation products will be available to all retail partners.

However, it was still finalising the specifics in partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), so the offers will only be announced closer to Black Friday.

Xbox and Microsoft product distributor Prima Interactive also told MyBroadband that deals would be available on the Series X and Series S consoles, as well as Xbox controllers.

The details of these offers will only be revealed in mid-November.

MyBroadband also asked Nintendo distributor Core for details about potential deals on the Switch consoles and accessories, but it had not provided feedback by the time of publication.

There is already some indication of what offers could be available from PlayStation this year.

According to a report from Dealabs magazine, which has a reputation for accurate early gaming-related leaks, Sony will roll out two PS5 Slim bundles with additional Fortnite content on 22 November 2024.

Dubbed the Fortnite Cobalt Star bundle, these will come with launch promotions from the week before Black Friday.

According to their information, the PS5 Slim with a disc drive and PS5 Slim Digital Edition will each get price cuts of $75 dollars in the US, €75 in Europe, and £75 in the UK.

When converted to rand, the discounts range from R1,319 (in the US) to R1,719 (in the UK).

On a percentage basis, the price cuts work out to between 14% and 19% of the consoles’ retail prices.

If applied to the prices of the consoles in South Africa, the PS5 Slim with disc drive could be discounted to somewhere between R11,899 and R12,699, while the PS5 Slim Digital Edition may be on offer from R9,699 to R10,699.

It should be emphasised that this is purely indicative, and it is not guaranteed that SIE’s offers in other countries will be the same as those in South Africa.

The table below shows speculative prices for the PS5 Slim — Fortnite Cobalt Star bundles in South Africa, based on the expected discounts in other countries.

PS5 deals a big hit in 2023

Despite already being three years old at the time, the PS5 was among the most in-demand Black Friday products of 2023.

Several online stores and retailers offered substantial discounts on the console and experienced huge demand when the items were put up for sale.

Among them was FNB, who offered 185 PS5s with two games for R185 per month over three years.

The total cost of the device over that term would be R6,660, a R7,339 discount over the console’s retail price.

After launching the deal just after midnight on Black Friday, numerous FNB mobile app users suffered repeated crashes and technical problems, which persisted for at least three and a half hours.

Game also offered a big deal on the PS5 without any games at just R6,499 — R7,500 less than its regular price.

An ongoing promotional discount of R1,900 when the deal was launched reduced the price further to R5,300.

However, successfully obtaining the console at that price would be a tall order, as there were only 10 PS5s at that price.

Game’s website also suffered downtime after about 7,000 visitors tried to get the deal.