How to Evaluate Gaming Deals on Black Friday: What’s Really a Bargain?

Knowing when you spot a real deal is key to getting the most for your money during the Black Friday period. While price reductions seem to be everywhere once the discount event gets into full swing, not all deals will be truly impressive.

There are occasions when products drop a small fraction of the price, or they can return to low prices they have previously been priced at. Not all deals include a ‘lowest ever price,’ and so it pays to know where you stand.

That’s why we’re going to look at how to evaluate the best Black Friday gaming deals.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. What are Black Friday Gaming Deals?
3. How to Analyze Black Friday Gaming Deals
4. Historic Black Friday Gaming Deals
5. Are All Black Friday Gaming Deals Worth It?
6. The Bottom Line
7. FAQs
8. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. What are Black Friday Gaming Deals?
3. How to Analyze Black Friday Gaming Deals
Show Full Guide
4. Historic Black Friday Gaming Deals
5. Are All Black Friday Gaming Deals Worth It?
6. The Bottom Line
7. FAQs
8. References

What are Black Friday Gaming Deals?

It is important to identify gaming deals on Black Friday correctly. Proper deals are verifiable discounts and savings on any gaming-related product. These may include consoles, gaming PCs, accessories, gaming hardware—possibly even computer components—and, of course, games themselves.

Any of these items could be considered a Black Friday gaming deal, but you’ll need to make sure that they are deals. To do this, there are three criteria we’d suggest you consider when looking for actual bargains during much of November. These criteria are also useful when shopping for other sales.

How to Analyze Black Friday Gaming Deals

Analyzing Black Friday deals is a step beyond knowing about MSRPs and cross-checking prices with a few retailers. Deal analysis can become very complicated, but following these six steps can help.

1. Does the Discount Seem Good?

If you’re often looking at the price of gaming items, you’ll know what prices you usually pay. The best Black Friday gaming deals should offer a clear reduction to the prices you’d usually see for a specific item. If that’s the case, you may have a bona fide Black Friday gaming deal on your hands.

2. Has the Product Been Cheaper?

One key thing to consider when looking for Black Friday bargains is whether the item you’re looking at has been cheaper. This could be during the same Black Friday event, beforehand, or in a previous event. If a product hasn’t been lower in price (and we’ll look at how you may tell below), then that’s a positive sign.

3. Can you Find the Product Elsewhere?

Some items and discounts may be retailer exclusives. However, if a product can be found elsewhere, you have an opportunity to see if a discount is a true bargain. We’ll look at this a little more below as we consider how to price-check and analyze Black Friday gaming deals.

4. Do You Know the MSRP?

Preparation is key when it comes to sale and discount events. So to check any Black Friday gaming deals, you’ll want to know the recommended price or MSRP (manufacturer-suggested retail price) of a product. With that information, you’ll be able to tell how much of a discount there is on a specific deal versus when the product was first available to buy.

This is more useful for newer products since older gaming products can naturally drop in price. However, since what’s good value ultimately depends on your opinion, knowing the savings based on a product’s MSRP is a useful bit of initial information.

For example, when looking for Black Friday gaming laptop deals, you may see a big drop versus the original MSRP. That will show you how much you can save versus buying something at launch.

5. Which Retailers Have You Checked?

Another key piece of information for checking the price of Black Friday deals is to check more than one retailer; check multiple retailers if you can. If you spot a deal you think is worth your money, spend a little while ensuring no other retailer offers the item at a similar or better price.

You’ll be surprised how much prices can change between retailers during Black Friday and how much items’ prices can fluctuate even with just one retailer across the period. We’ll discuss how to analyze Black Friday deals below.

When it comes to price checks, if you know a product’s regular MSRP and see a deal, check other retailers. This way, you can at least know that you’re getting a good price based on the product’s initial cost and what is available elsewhere.

6. Tally Up

Finally, if you are looking at a bundle offer, maybe Black Friday gaming PC deals, it can be worth pricing included items individually. This may be the PC itself, a monitor, a keyboard mouse, or a headset that comes as part of the deal.

Knowing the cost of these items individually can help you analyze the quality of an overall deal and decide whether it’s worth spending a bit less to avoid getting items you don’t want included.

Historic Black Friday Gaming Deals

We’ve included some historical pricing below as an example of how pricing can change across years of Black Friday events. Here, you’ll see a few specific deals from last year’s sales versus current pricing.

Look at Prices Before Black Friday

If you keep an eye on prices for games, accessories, or other gaming items throughout the year, that’s useful. However, even taking a look at prices before Black Friday can be a big help when seeking out deals.

If you know what the existing ‘regular’ prices are, you’ll have a better idea of true discounts when Black Friday starts. So even if a game is, say, $15 off against its MSRP, if it was $14 off just before Black Friday, then it may not be quite as good a deal as it looks.

Check Historical Pricing

An extra element to analyzing Black Friday gaming deals is historical pricing. This final bit of information can help by offering historical context to any deals you find. It will help you to analyze whether a great discount is the ‘lowest ever’ price. It can even suggest (and it is only a suggestion) that certain products can drop significantly (or not at all) during Black Friday events.

You can use the website Camelcamelcamel to check historical pricing for Amazon products – sometimes across the last year, sometimes a longer period. While this is only for Amazon pricing, it is still useful information in analyzing changes to pricing across months and years. You may spot that a product was last at its lowest price on Amazon during Black Friday or that pricing has yet to drop at all.

Xbox Series X

• Then: Xbox Series X bundle with Diablo 4 – $439 (Walmart, Nov 2023, TechRadar)
• Now: Xbox Series X bundle with Diablo 4 – $578 (Amazon, Sept 2024)

Nintendo Switch

• Then: Nintendo Switch + Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundle – $300 (Amazon, Nov 2023, TechRadar)
• Now: Nintendo Switch + Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundle – $359 (Amazon, Sept 2024)

PS5

• Then: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – $29.99 – (PlayStation Direct, Nov 2023, Mashable)
• Now: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – $69.99 – (PlayStation Direct, Nov 2024)
• Then: Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense Controller – $49 (Amazon, Nov 2023, Forbes)
• Now: Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense Controller – $69 (Amazon, Sept 2024)

Are All Black Friday Gaming Deals Worth It?

No, not all Black Friday gaming deals are worth it. Sometimes similar offers can be found throughout the year, and some prices aren’t as low as you may think they would be.

There is a lot of hype around Black Friday, and there are deals to be found. Black Friday is a great opportunity to save money if you know what you are looking for and want. Ultimately though, you need to consider whether a deal is right for you before you buy.

The Bottom Line

The Black Friday gaming deals should yield some good results whether you’re interested in discounted hardware or software. However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all savings are created equal; shopping around and doing your own price comparison at major retailers will offer up the deepest discounts, even if it’s a little more work during the busy November period.

FAQs