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.

So this is when the console battle finally starts to get interesting.

In spite of the swathes of hype over the Wii and the Xbox 360, the new generation console war isn’t really - Nintendo aside - in the mass market space yet, with pricing still reflecting the premium status of the machines.

But that may be about to change. Sony’s confirmation of a $100 price cut on the Playstation 3 in the States sets off phase two of the battle, and we’re at the point where the real numbers start to come through. It’s a price cut that Sony both couldn’t afford and couldn’t afford not to make, but at least it means this Christmas - even with a 360 price cut expected - will be a better indicator of where the chips will eventually lie come the end of each machine’s lifespan. 100 million PS2 made it out over the course of its (ongoing) lifespan, and thus far the 5-10m sales of individual machines at the moment have to be taken as opening skirmishes, and little more.

The likelhood is though that the PS3 is still two price cuts away from being mass market, not one, and as a result Sony are continuing to surrender a valuable commodity in this particular battle - time. Will $100 be enough to stem the tide? Probably not. And it’ll be interesting to see what they do in the UK, what with at least one High Street store still brazenly selling the PS3 for under £400 anyway.

The one to watch is, still, the Wii. More and more pundits are creeping out of the woodwork and suggesting that now is as good as it gets for Nintendo’s baby. But, surely, only a fool would bet against it having one hell of a Christmas…

Before I begin, I’d like it, ahem, struck from the record that when Mr Davey Winder posted about the PS3 a few months ago, I may, er, have got quite vociferous in the talkbacks over my thoughts of the console.

The long and short of it: I’ve got one.

Yet this past weekend, I’ve not really played many games on it. That’s primarily because there’s no outstanding game out for the machine yet, although I’ve enjoyed Resistance (Virtua Tennis 3 doesn’t qualify because I’ve been hammering that on my 360 for the past few months). It’s also because there’s some quite un-Sony like about it. Sure, the pricing, the arrogance of the launch, the stripping down of the European model etc has Sony written all over it, but I’m intrigued by the surprising codec support, the inclusion of a Folding client, and that oh-so-tempting option in the menu to install another OS. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do next.

It’s stil a ridiculous amount of money they’re asking though, that only justifies itself if you have a compelling need right now for a Blu-ray player. But credit where credit’s due: the end result, bastardised though it is to an extent, is an intriguing - and quiet - box of tricks, that if Sony really follow through and let us tamper with to the extent of a fresh OS, could prove to be a bit of an Aladdin’s cave in months to come.

If I was spending £400 now, though, the Xbox 360/Wii combination is still, undoubtedly, the better deal.