PS5 pre-order guide: Best practices to purchase Sony’s next home console

The PlayStation 5 will arrive this upcoming holiday season. Usually this would be an immediate cause for excitement, only Sony has yet to give us an official date or price point for its next-generation home console. Sure, we did get a good look at what the PS4 successor finally looks like during June’s ‘Days of Play’ digital presentation, but players are eager to know exactly when a PS5 pre-order will be possible.

Well, as it turns out, we might not have to wait much longer. Select retailers from around the UK have started to offer ways to register their interest in either the standard or digital edition of Sony’s console by way of a PS5 pre-order. In this guide, we’ll detail and break down your best bet on how to do this in a way that secures your PS5 pre-order.

PS5 pre-order: Register your interest at these UK retailers

While no price has been revealed for either the PS5 or PS5 Digital Edition, there are a few retailers where you can register your interest. All you need do is simply enter your contact details into your outlet of choice’s online form, where you will then receive a newsletter or email notification as soon as PS5 pre-orders go live.

Where can you do this? One of the earliest UK retailers to offer this luxury (even before we saw what the PS5 console looked like) was Currys PC World. Click this link and you’ll arrive at the tech giant’s dedicated landing page, registering your interest in a PS5 pre-order by scrolling down a little and following the necessary instructions. This will ensure that you’ve been added to their mailing list specifically for all things PS5.

The second UK retailer offering this functionality is Amazon. Again, the PS5 listing merely states that it is “currently unavailable” but this is where you’ll need to go when PS5 pre-orders go live. However, you can stay ahead of the game and be notified immediately as soon as this occurs by registering your interest located at the top of the listing. Amazon even offers you the ability to select between the standard, disc drive-equipped PS5 or the Digital Edition variant.

PS5 pre-order: When will they go live?

Putting a hard date or time on when PS5 pre-orders will go live is nigh-on impossible. The strategy of both platform-holders has been incredibly haphazard up until recently, with Sony refusing to acknowledge the existence of anything PS5 related outside of a few interviews with Wired. This thankfully changed when we were given a look at the console box back in June, but who’s to say as when Sony will choose to reveal any more information?

The good news is that the presence of multiple retailers promoting ‘register your interest’ pages is that it indicates we’ll hear something about a release date and price sooner rather than later. After all, both iterations of the PS5 are due to launch this holiday season and we’re quickly entering the grace period where Sony will need to take pre-orders to drum up hype and dish out stock to retailers.

PS5 pre-order: Price predictions

Historically, Sony has taken a loss when selling its home console offerings. The PS4 launched in the UK for roughly £349.99, which was a steal considering the tech packed into the box. Why do this? To stay competitive in the market, making up the profit margin via software sales. That said, it’s highly unlikely that PS5 or the PS5 Digital Edition will retail at launch for anywhere close to £350 like last time. Predictions put the price at anywhere between £449 - £529.

The jump in price is due to all sorts of things, but chief amongst them is the unprecedented tech specs present in the machine. The introduction of an SSD (Solid State Hard Drive) alone means that games will be able to render and load faster than anything seen on PS4 or even Xbox One X, which when coupled with a custom 8-core AMD processor should give you an idea as to why PS5 will likely retail for a much higher price point than the last generation of consoles.