Every year, there are certain landmark sales events that are always penciled in on the calendar. The year kicks off with the Boxing Day sales, then Easter sales are usually pretty big, Memorial Day and Fourth of July sales come next, and the year rounds out with Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. But there's one sales event that's managed to sneak on the calendar in the last few years: Amazon Prime Day. Prime Day sees an unfathomable number of Amazon items reduced for just a few days, including a plethora of gaming-related products. And while Prime Day has been and gone, Amazon is hosting a similar event in just a few weeks' time.
Just a few days ago, Amazon announced that it would be hosting another big sales event in the second week of October. Called the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale, this two-day event may not officially have the Amazon Prime Day branding, but it's certainly of the same ilk. For two days, Prime subscribers will be able to take advantage of a whole slew of exclusive deals, only available for Prime members. Though exact details on what items will be included in this sale are unknown, it's pretty likely that gamers will be treated to a vast range of reductions on everything from controllers to consoles to games.
What Prime's Early Access Sale Means For Gamers
The upcoming Amazon Prime Early Access Sale begins on October 11 at 12am PDT. For those in the UK, it technically begins eight whole hours earlier, at 12am BST. The sale is then supposed to wrap up on October 12 at exactly 11:59pm in each respective region. The Amazon Prime Early Access Sale will be available across the US, the UK, and in 13 other countries, including Canada, China, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. To gain access to this exclusive sale, gamers must first be subscribed to Amazon Prime.
This is a new event for Amazon, expressly designed to allow early Holiday shoppers to make the most of their Prime subscription. The sale comes a whole month and a bit before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so this event is probably the best opportunity gamers have to grab the stuff they want before the overwhelming Holiday rush, or alternatively, to pick up that game or peripheral they've been wanting since the start of the year. With the Early Access Sale being pretty much just another Prime Day, it seems likely that the deals will probably be quite similar, giving gamers a good idea of what to expect on October 11.
If the Early Access Sale does follow the same trend as Prime Day, then gamers can expect to see plenty of reductions on a wide range of controllers. Prime Day saw Xbox Series X and PS5 DualSense controllers drop by about $10-15, which is always a welcome deal for anyone looking for a replacement controller or an extra for split-screen. A handful of console bundles may also end up on sale, though these will probably revolve around the Xbox Series S and Nintendo Switch, as the Xbox Series X and PS5 are still selling like hotcakes.
Of course, they'll be an absurd amount of games on sale as well. The LEGO games are always a big part of these Amazon sales, as are third-party AAA games that may have gone unnoticed earlier in the year. Dying Light 2, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and the next-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 all seem like safe bets. While it seems unlikely that any of the big first-party releases like Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Horizon Forbidden West, or Splatoon 3 will get any sizable reductions, it's also possible that a few bucks get shaved off the asking price. It's also possible, but a little unlikely, that some upcoming games may be reduced by a tiny amount for pre-order, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Gotham Knights, or maybe even God of War Ragnarok.