The 2024 Black Friday Games Guide

By Garrett Martin | November 26, 2024 | 5:19pm

Video Games Features black friday

I don’t know about you, but it’s been way too long since I busted down the doors to some sweet, sweet bargains. Fortunately America’s number one holiday is only a few days away—and already in full swing online. When it comes to cheap stuff—or at least stuff that’s a little bit cheaper than it would otherwise be—nothing beats Black Friday, the sickest Friday around. And if you’re looking for deals on videogames and videogame accessories this week, here’s where you can find ‘em. Let’s get ready to save a tiny amount while spending more than we probably should! Here are the best Black Friday game deals of 2024.

PlayStation 5 Consoles, Bundles, and Virtual Reality

Even though Sony’s latest console is already four years old, the current base model, nicknamed the slim, retails for $499 throughout the year, at least for a unit with a disc drive. The digital-only version sits at a surprisingly hefty $399, whereas the brand new PlayStation 5 Pro will knock you out at $699. Don’t expect much in the way of PS5 Pro deals this Black Friday—it literally just came out three weeks ago—but there are a lot of opportunities to get a discount on the standard PlayStation 5 and the digital edition, many with games that don’t normally come with it.

You can score a PlayStation 5 slim for $424, which is a smooth $76 less than it normally costs, from a number of retailers this season, including Target, Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop. Walmart, meanwhile, has a variety of bundles featuring the PS5 and one game for $449; games available in that deal include Dragon Age: The Veilguard, College Football 25, and the latest Madden and NHL installments. If you’re done with physical media, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition is $374 at the same stores. If you look around you can also find digital bundles featuring a variety of different games, including the always popular Fortnite.

Xbox Series X|S Consoles

If you’re more attuned to the Xbox’s wavelength than the PlayStation’s, you can also find savings on the Xbox Series X|S family of consoles. The Xbox Series X, which is the version with a disc drive, is going for $399 at both Amazon and the major big box stores (Target, Best Buy, and Walmart), which is just about $50 off the standard price. That comes with a 1 TB hard drive. The digital-only Xbox Series S is on sale for $249 at those same retail stores, which is $50 off the regular asking price; it doesn’t seem to be discounted at all at Amazon.

Meta Quest 3S Headset

Like the PlayStation 5 Pro, the Meta Quest 3S VR headset has only been out for a few weeks. Unlike the Pro, though, you can actually find a pretty good deal involving the 3S right now. If you buy the 3S from Amazon at the standard $300 price, you’ll get a $75 Amazon credit, effectively making it only $225 for the headset. You won’t find that one anywhere else.

Various Game Discounts

This week is traditionally the best week of the year when it comes to game discounts. You can find significant savings on games for all platforms, from perennial favorites to brand new releases. Highlights include two of the best new games from this fall seeing their biggest sales yet, with the heavily acclaimed RPG Metaphor: Refantazio going for $20 off at Amazon, and Astro Bot selling for $50 instead of $60 at Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart (I need to make up some kind of acronym for those two; TWAB?). Some of our favorite games of the last few years are seeing notable deals, too; the all-conquering Elden Ring, which is usually still a full $60 almost three years after release, is slashed all the way down to $20 at Walmat, Best Buy, and Amazon. Walmart is selling Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for a cool $30, and it’s also available at Best Buy and Target for the slightly higher price of $40. Those two stores and GameStop all have Super Mario Odyssey for $30 (only Nintendo could get away with still charging full price on a seven-year-old game), whereas the big Black Friday sale on the Xbox store sees Pentiment going for $10 and Psychonauts 2 for $12—all-time lows for two of the best games of the decade so far.

Arcade1Up Arcade Cabinet Reproductions

Arcade1Up‘s reproductions of classic arcade cabinets are controversial among serious arcade aficionados, who understandably blanch at anything other than the real deal. For those of us who can’t drop several hundred dollars, or even thousands, on a single game, though, they’re a cost effective way to recapture the fun of the arcade at home. The Arcade1Up site is currently running deals on five arcade units, each of which comes with several games. The Class of ’81 Deluxe Arcade Game includes 12 games by Namco, including Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, Mappy, and obscurities like Tower of Druaga and King and Balloon. The Marvel vs. Capcom 2 X-Men ’97 Edition gathers together eight of Capcom’s Marvel and X-Men games from the ’90s, and features online multiplayer. The Mortal Kombat II branded machine comes with 14 classics by Bally Midway, including the first four Mortal Kombat games, Rampage, Defender, Joust, Gauntlet, Tapper, Paperboy, and more. The PAC-MAN model collects a half dozen Pac-Man iterations (no Ms. Pac-Man, sorry), as well as a few other Namco titles like Galaga, Dig Dug, and Mappy. All four are currently $100 off, coming in at $399 instead of $499. Meanwhile the NBA Jam cabinet features two-player versions of three NBA Jam games, including the original, Tournament Edition, and Hang Time; it gets a smaller discount, only $50, setting it at $449. You can also find these, and potentially other Arcade1Up deals, at Best Buy and Walmart.