Gaming and Media for the Living Room in 2026: Real Product Names, September Prices, and Empty Shelves

Sony sells nothing called a Slim, all three PlayStation 5 models read Currently Unavailable on its own store, and the Switch 2 costs 499.99 dollars as of today.

Sony’s own store lists three consoles this morning: the PlayStation 5 Console 1 TB at 649 dollars, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition 825 GB at 599 dollars, and the PS5 Pro 2 TB at 899 dollars. Every one of the three is marked Currently Unavailable. Nintendo, meanwhile, moved the Switch 2 from 449.99 to 499.99 dollars with effect from today, 1 September 2026. That is the honest state of living-room hardware: the names shoppers type into search boxes are not the names on the products, and the numbers have gone up rather than down.

Key facts, checked 1 September 2026

• PlayStation 5 Console 1 TB: 649 dollars, listed Currently Unavailable and Coming Soon
• PlayStation 5 Digital Edition 825 GB: 599 dollars, Currently Unavailable
• PS5 Pro 2 TB: 899 dollars, Currently Unavailable, up 150 dollars on 2 April 2026
• Nintendo Switch 2: 499.99 dollars from today, up from 449.99 dollars
• Sony’s disc-console page states new PlayStation games go digital-only from January 2028

Sony’s three consoles cost 599, 649 and 899 dollars

There is no PlayStation 5 Slim. Wikipedia’s PlayStation 5 article is explicit that the November 2023 CFI-2000 hardware is only colloquially called that, and Sony announced those units as revised models of the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. On Sony’s storefront today the products are named PlayStation 5 Console – 1 TB, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Console – 825 GB, and PlayStation 5 Pro Console – 2 TB. If a retailer listing says Slim, it is using shopper shorthand, not a Sony product line.

The prices tell a story consoles usually do not. At the November 2020 launch the disc machine was 499 dollars and the Digital Edition 399. In August 2025 Sony raised every US unit by 50 dollars, citing a challenging economic environment. On 2 April 2026 it raised prices again, globally, taking another 50 dollars off the Digital Edition and another 150 off the Pro, this time citing the global economic landscape. Measured from launch, the Digital Edition is up 50 percent, the disc console 30 percent, and the Pro 29 percent. Neither increase bought the buyer anything new.

One inconsistency is worth flagging before anyone quotes storage figures. Sony’s current Digital Edition listing says 825 GB, not the 1 TB that the 2023 revision carried. Check the SKU in front of you rather than trusting a spec sheet copied from a 2023 review.

Eighty dollars for a detachable drive, and a shrinking reason to want one

The 2023 redesign separated the optical drive from the console and sold it on its own for 80 dollars, and the revised Digital Edition arrived 50 dollars more expensive than the machine it replaced. That was a price rise wearing a smaller chassis. Today the gap between Digital Edition and disc console is 50 dollars, which looks like an easy call for anyone who buys second-hand discs.

It is less easy than it looks. Sony’s own product page for the disc console states that from January 2028, newly released PlayStation games will be sold on the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only, with discs for earlier releases still playable on the drive-equipped model. If that wording holds, the disc drive is a way to keep playing a library that stops growing at a fixed date. Buy the disc model to protect games you already own, not as a hedge on the next five years of releases.

Nintendo’s new number, 499.99 dollars, starts today

Nintendo announced the increase on 9 May 2026 and it takes effect on 1 September 2026: the US Switch 2 goes from 449.99 to 499.99 dollars, Canada to 679.99 Canadian dollars, Europe to 499.99 euros. The company pointed to the ongoing global memory shortage among other factors. TechRadar reported on 13 August 2026 that Nintendo had been warning shoppers about the rise through in-store kiosks, and credited the company for giving notice that not every hardware maker has bothered with.

Do not merge this with the earlier increase. The August 2025 rise, which added about 50 dollars each to the original Switch, the Switch Lite and the Switch OLED, was attributed to tariffs imposed during 2025. Today’s rise is attributed to component supply. Two different causes, thirteen months apart, both landing on the same shelf.

Docked output, 256 GB, and a library that came across intact

For a living room the relevant Switch 2 numbers are these: 4K at 60 Hz when docked, a 7.9-inch 1080p LCD at up to 120 Hz in the hand, an Nvidia Tegra T239 with 12 GB of LPDDR5X, 256 GB of internal storage expandable by microSD Express to 2 TB, and a 5,220 mAh battery rated at two to six and a half hours. The screen is LCD rather than OLED, which is the one specification where the older handheld still wins.

Backward compatibility is the part that makes the upgrade defensible. Nintendo tested 122 first-party Switch titles as of May 2025 and found all of them compatible except the Labo VR Kit, which was excluded on physical grounds. Of more than 15,000 third-party titles, roughly 170 had compatibility problems. The machine had shipped over 19 million units by March 2026. A household moving up is not abandoning its shelf.

Why we would not buy the Pro at 899 dollars right now

The PS5 Pro launched on 7 November 2024 at 699 dollars with a 2 TB SSD, no optical drive and no vertical stand. It is now 899 dollars after two increases in eight months, neither of which added a feature. That alone would make it a hard sell.

The stock picture makes it worse. FlatpanelsHD reported that the Pro was sold out across the US and much of Europe as of 31 August 2026, with demand driven by a GTA VI preview released on Netflix on 28 August, and flagged the risk of thin supply into the holidays. Buying a scarce console at the top of a price cycle is how people end up paying above list to a reseller. We would not recommend the Pro this month at 899 dollars, and we have no independent measurement of it to set against that price. There has also been no PlayStation 6 announcement in anything we could check, so waiting is not a bet on a specific replacement date – just on the price and the shelves settling.

What we would buy for a first console, and what we would wait out

The order below assumes one machine for a shared room, bought new, at today’s prices.

1. Switch 2 at 499.99 dollars for a household buying a single console today. It is the current generation, it plays essentially the whole previous library, and it is in normal supply.
2. PlayStation 5 Digital Edition at 599 dollars if you can find it in stock and you already buy everything from a store rather than a shelf.
3. PlayStation 5 Console 1 TB at 649 dollars only if physical discs matter to you, and with January 2028 written on the calendar.
4. Not the PS5 Pro at 899 dollars this month.
5. Do not press a console into service as the household streaming box. Streaming hardware prices rose across the board in 2026, and FlatpanelsHD’s own tally still puts every mainstream stick well below the cost of a console.

Sources: PlayStation Direct · Wikipedia · Wikipedia · FlatpanelsHD · TechRadar