Playstation Direct
Fashion
2%
Standard console readily available, PS5 Pro listed at £789.99 and genuinely hard to find
Soleback Team
The PS5 situation is the inverse of 2021. Back then chips were short, now it is memory, bought up by data centres running artificial intelligence, and Sony has raised prices twice in under a year. The disc console sits at £569.99 and the Digital Edition at £519.99, both readily available. The PS5 Pro is listed at £789.99 but has become genuinely hard to find, with Sony warning retailers that supply stays tight into early 2027. Going through the Soleback catalogue on purchases at this level returns real money.
Sony raised prices across Europe on 2 April 2026. In the UK that meant £569.99 for the PS5 with a disc drive, up from £479.99, £519.99 for the Digital Edition, up from £429.99, and £789.99 for the PS5 Pro, up from £699.99. The PS Portal sits at £219.99. Every console went up by £90.
The cause is not player demand. Memory prices have climbed sharply because manufacturers are selling their capacity to data centres serving artificial intelligence. A console loses that auction, since the margin on server parts is far higher.
The scale shows in the numbers. In the quarter ending March 2026 Sony sold 1.5 million PS5 units, down 46 per cent year on year. The company said plainly that it would plan hardware sales for the current financial year around how much memory it can buy at reasonable prices.
The Pro needs more memory than the standard console, so the shortage hits it hardest. Which? reported in September that it had been struggling to find stock of the model at all, and the console remains out at major retailers with only occasional random drops.
Sony told retailers, in a memo obtained by German outlet Playfront, that constraints would persist through early 2027 at the earliest, blaming temporary market supply constraints and high demand.
On the continent the same shortage has pushed marketplace sellers to ask the equivalent of well over the official price, which is worth knowing before you accept a third-party listing here.
Grand Theft Auto VI arrives on 19 November 2026, and Sony has been marketing the PS5 Pro alongside Rockstar as the best place to play it. That campaign has landed on an already thin supply, which is the main reason availability got worse rather than better through September.
For the standard console there is nothing to wait for. The PS5 and PS5 Digital are in stock at list price, and buying now costs no more than buying later.
For the Pro, patience is the better play. Regular allocations do reappear at official pricing, sometimes with longer delivery estimates, and they sell through quickly. Paying a reseller premium during a shortage is the one avoidable mistake here.
GAME: the UK's dedicated games chain, updates console pricing early and gets regular allocations
The Game Collection: independent specialist, often competitive on bundles rather than bare consoles
The Game Collective: worth checking alongside the above when stock is thin everywhere else
The store pages with current rebate rates sit in the Soleback catalogue.
Set stock alerts: most large retailers let you register for a specific variant, which beats refreshing a page
Check in the morning: deliveries are usually booked into retail systems before stores open
Have the account ready: with small allocations seconds decide it, so save the delivery address and payment method beforehand
Watch bundles: a console packaged with a game is often still there when the bare console has gone
Separate marketplace from retailer: a listing far above £789.99 almost always comes from a third-party seller rather than the shop itself
At these sums the rebate stops being loose change. On a console at £569.99, 2 per cent returns about £11.40, 3 per cent about £17 and 5 per cent about £28.50. On a PS5 Pro at £789.99 the same rates give roughly £15.80, £23.70 and £39.50.
Electronics usually carries lower rates than fashion because the margins are thinner. The exact figure is on the store's page in the Soleback catalogue, which is also where you click through so the rebate registers.
If you would rather not remember every time, the Soleback extension prompts you to activate. New accounts also get the welcome bonus.
App versus browser: cashback registers on browser purchases, buying inside a retailer app usually will not track
Finance and buy now pay later: some retailers exclude commission on financed orders, worth checking before a large purchase
Codes from elsewhere: a voucher found outside Soleback can zero the commission, and then there is nothing to pay out from
Marketplace versus retailer: on marketplace platforms the rebate usually covers only selected sellers
Approval time: on electronics the rebate is released after the returns window closes, so a console takes patience
The market has split in two. The PS5 and PS5 Digital are available at £569.99 and £519.99, exactly what the price list says. The PS5 Pro has become scarce goods at £789.99 that you often cannot actually buy, and Sony is signalling tight supply into early 2027. At this kind of money, a few minutes comparing retailers and one click to activate the rebate pays back faster than on any other purchase.
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Soleback Team
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