Microsoft has yet to officially confirm it but it looks like the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive is in for a bit of a discount.

This news comes from a consumer electronics fair in Germany where some loose cannon or other has announced that the bolt-on player will soon retail at 179 Euros (approximately £120) – that’s 20 Euros off the previous asking price. Not great, but better than nowt, we suppose.

Interestingly, if you add all the bits together to make the Xbox 360 Premium unit sort of equivalent to the Playstation 3 – so that’s the 20GB premium unit at £249.99, the wireless bridge at £54.99 and the HD DVD drive at, say, £100 (it already retails for around £120 in the UK) - the two consoles are pretty much on a par, value-wise. Then again one has all the above componentry in the one box and rather dominates the HD video market with Blu-Ray, while the other allows users to add such features only if they want to and plays brilliant games like Bioshock, PGR4, Mass Effect and Halo 3 etc.

Is that a bit of prejudice showing there? Probably...