Walking round the shopping arcades of Britain – as I seem to have spent far too long doing over the past few days – I’ve been curious to see how retailers have dealt with Sony’s announcement of a cheaper version of the Playstation 3. Predictably, they’ve embraced it with open arms, to the point where Sony now boasts of a 178% increase in PS3 sales over the past weekend (although as someone wise probably said, 178% of little is still not very much).

But I can’t help feeling uncomfortable at a deception taking place here. Because the new £299 Playstation 3 price point has come at a cost to the consumer, of which many I’d argue know little about. For this isn’t the same machine that’s previously been sold for £425 that’s being discounted (and that’s why retailers are being very careful with their terminology). Instead, it’s a unit that’s got a 40GB hard drive instead of 60GB, has had all backwards compatibility with PS2 games taken away, has lost a memory slot and USB ports, and generally is a lower spec’d machine.

Joe Public, judging by the scenes I saw over the weekend, doesn’t seem to have realised this, nor is there a queue of shop assistants looking to put them right. They’re just glad to be shifting PS3s again in a quantity previously only seen in the first two weeks after launch.

It’s an uncomfortable sleight of hand that Sony has pulled here, even before you consider how it flies in the face of its previous statements one or two of its represenatives have made. And while it’ll likely give the Playstation 3 a better Christmas than it was previously facing, it’s a pity that the consumer is having to bear a bit of the brunt for such a mess being made of the PS3 project in the first place.