The £800 Console Is Coming — Here’s Why Repairing Your Current One Makes More Sense

Direct Answer: The PS6 is rumoured to cost up to £800 at launch, and Square Enix just proved this week that cloud gaming purchases can vanish without warning. The smartest move for most gamers right now is keeping their existing PS5, Xbox or Switch in top condition — which is considerably cheaper than replacing it.

Key Takeaways

PS6 is expected to cost £550–£800, with Sony confirming the PS5 lifecycle will run well into 2027–2028 at minimum.
Square Enix delisted Kingdom Hearts cloud versions on 9 June 2026 — customers who paid for games lost access with no free replacement. Physical ownership matters more than ever.
A PS5 deep clean and liquid metal replacement typically costs a fraction of a new console and can add years of reliable performance.

Why Repairing Your Current One Makes More Sense

Something shifted in gaming this week — and it wasn’t a new release. On 9 June 2026, Square Enix quietly delisted the Kingdom Hearts cloud versions from the Nintendo Switch eShop. People who had paid real money for those games will lose access entirely in June 2027. No free upgrade. Just gone. At the same time, leaked pricing for the PS6 has been circulating online suggesting the next PlayStation could launch somewhere between £550 and a jaw-dropping £800.

Put those two things together and a picture emerges: the industry wants you to own less, pay more, and stay on the upgrade treadmill indefinitely. A lot of gamers are pushing back — and they’re right to.

The Cloud Gaming Warning Shot

The Kingdom Hearts situation is the clearest proof yet of what critics of cloud gaming and digital-only ownership have been saying for years. When you buy a physical disc, you own it. When you buy a cloud version of a game, you’re buying access — and access can be revoked. Square Enix offered existing cloud owners discounts on the new versions rather than free replacements. So customers paid once, and are now being asked to pay again.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Square Enix previously shut down its Shinra cloud gaming service entirely, taking games with it. The pattern is consistent: cloud libraries are at the mercy of commercial decisions, and those decisions don’t always favour the people who already paid.

Physical media and physical hardware you own outright are, in this environment, increasingly valuable. A console you own can be repaired, upgraded, cleaned and kept running. A cloud subscription can end with a notice period and a discount code.

The £800 Console Problem

Leaked pricing and industry analyst predictions have placed the PS6 anywhere between £550 and £800, depending on the model. Given the PS5 Pro launched at £699 in late 2024, a £750–800 PS6 is entirely plausible. For context, the original PS5 launched at £449. In less than a decade, Sony’s flagship console has nearly doubled in price.

Reddit’s gaming communities have been vocal about this. Threads with hundreds of thousands of upvotes show players saying they’re perfectly content staying on PS5 or Xbox Series X — not because they’re not interested in new hardware, but because the financial case for upgrading has collapsed. Sony itself has confirmed the PS5 lifecycle will run considerably longer than previous generations, with PS6 unlikely to arrive before 2027 at the earliest and potentially closer to 2028–2029.

That’s two to three more years of PS5. Which means two to three more years of your existing console needing to perform well.

What “Keeping Your Console Healthy” Actually Means

The most common reason a PS5 starts sounding like a jet engine — and eventually starts throttling performance or shutting down mid-game — isn’t a fundamental hardware failure. It’s two things: dust, and dried-out liquid metal thermal paste.

Sony used liquid metal as the thermal interface material between the PS5’s processor and its heat sink. It’s excellent when new. Over time, it can migrate, dry out, or degrade — causing the chip to run hotter, the fan to work harder, and performance to suffer. A professional deep clean combined with liquid metal replacement addresses both problems directly. It’s not a workaround. It’s the service the console should have had after two or three years of heavy use.

The result is a console that runs quieter, cooler, and more reliably — for considerably less than the cost of a new machine, let alone a £800 next-gen replacement.

We’ve written about this before on our games console repairs page — the range of issues we see and fix regularly, from overheating to power faults to board-level problems.

When Consoles Look Dead But Aren’t

A console that won’t turn on at all is genuinely alarming — but it’s not always the death sentence it appears to be. Power supply faults, failed capacitors and board-level issues that present as a completely dead machine are often repairable. We’ve documented exactly this on our dead Xbox board repair page — a machine that looked beyond saving, brought back to full working order.

The same logic applies to Nintendo hardware. A Switch that won’t charge or power on is a common fault with several known causes — charging port damage, battery failure, software issues — most of which are fixable. Our guide to Nintendo Switch charging and power problems covers the diagnostic steps and what repair typically involves.

The Repair vs Replace Maths

Scenario	Approximate Cost	Outcome
PS5 deep clean + liquid metal replacement	£60–£90	Console runs cool and quiet, extended lifespan 3–5 years
PS5 HDMI port repair	£70–£100	Full display output restored
Xbox board repair (dead console)	£80–£150	Console fully operational
Nintendo Switch charging port repair	£40–£70	Charges and powers on normally
New PS6 at launch (estimated)	£550–£800	New hardware, but your existing library, saves and setup start again

Own Your Hardware. Own Your Games.

The gaming industry’s direction of travel is clear: subscriptions, cloud libraries, digital-only editions, hardware lease schemes. PlayStation Flex already lets you rent a PS5 monthly rather than buying one. Xbox Game Pass bundles hardware and software into a rolling payment. These models benefit the platforms. They benefit you less than owning your hardware outright.

A console you own can be repaired when it develops a fault. A console you’re leasing goes back to the provider — usually without repair, usually replaced with a refurbished unit, usually with restrictions on what you can do with it. Physical ownership, in a landscape where Square Enix can remove your games with twelve months’ notice, is worth protecting.

If your PS5 is running loud, your Xbox won’t turn on, or your Switch won’t charge — get it looked at before you write it off. The repair bill is almost always a fraction of the alternative.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much will the PS6 cost in the UK?

No official price has been confirmed, but leaks and industry analysts suggest the PS6 could cost between £550 and £800 at launch, with a high-end variant potentially reaching £800 or more. Sony has indicated the PS5 lifecycle will run longer than previous generations, with PS6 unlikely before 2027–2028.

Is it worth repairing a PS5 instead of buying a PS6?

Yes, in most cases. A PS5 repair — whether that’s a deep clean, liquid metal replacement, HDMI port repair or power fault fix — typically costs a fraction of a new console. With PS6 prices expected to exceed £700, keeping a well-maintained PS5 running for another three to five years is the smarter financial decision for most people.

Why is my PS5 making a loud fan noise?

A loud fan on a PS5 is usually caused by dust build-up blocking airflow, or degraded liquid metal thermal paste on the processor drying out and losing effectiveness. Both cause the console to overheat and the fan to work harder. A professional deep clean and liquid metal replacement will typically resolve the issue and significantly extend the console’s life.

What happened to Kingdom Hearts on Nintendo Switch?

On 9 June 2026, Square Enix delisted the cloud versions of Kingdom Hearts from the Nintendo Switch eShop. Customers who paid for these cloud titles will lose access entirely in June 2027, with no free upgrade offered to the new digital versions. It is a stark example of how cloud game purchases can disappear regardless of what you paid.

Can a dead Xbox be repaired?

Often yes. Many Xbox consoles that appear completely dead have repairable faults including failed capacitors, power supply issues or board-level faults. A board repair by a qualified technician can bring a dead Xbox back to full working order at a fraction of replacement cost.

james