Would you like a cheap Wii, PS3 or Xbox 360?

Amazon.com are stopping just short of offering gamers winning Lotto tickets, but are offering the closest thing to console-buying heaven with systems at significantly less than half price.  It’s the Amazon Customer Survey, and it’ll be interesting to see if their site survives the inevitable rush.

Reported by GamingBits this is an extremely savvy offer by Amazon.  As well as harnessing the entire next-gen demographic (as well as generating data for use by all the partisan factions involved), they’re generating a huge amount of advertising for relatively low cost.

Only 1,000 lucky gamers will have the chance to avail of the cut-price offer: and since those will chosen at random, there’s a fair chance that they’ll be offered a winning deal that they don’t want.  Of course it never hurts to have another cheap console (even one you already have for resale value). 

So far the Wii is far in the lead, with more votes than the competition put together.  This should come as a surprise to absolutely no-one, with the continuing supply shortages (whether you believe they’re genuine or not) and Nintendo’s family friendly box gearing up to be the must-have item for the second Christmas in a row. 

Sony fans will be please to see that the new 40 GB PS3 model is beating the XBox arcade quite handily – though whether that’s because more people already have Xboxes or the idea of a cheap PS3 is still an amazing and novel one remains to be seen.  Maybe the PS3s crippling lack of backwards compatibility is simply less-worse than the Arcades crippling lack of hard drive.

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• Nintendo makes $6 per Wii sold – cheap really is cheerful
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• Get $50 off a Sony PS3 at Amazon.com with previous HD-DVD purchase