At midnight last night, SCEE confirmed that a million consoles would be made available for retail across PAL territories Europe, Africa, The Middle East and Australasia.

Amazon’s console and video games manager James Schall told MCV: “No matter what number Sony decide to give us out of that one million, it won’t be enough to supply for the demand out there, which we already know to be absolutely phenomenal. We’re in discussions with them and obviously trying to get as many as is humanly possible.

“Our aim is to ensure customers aren’t queuing and fighting in the cold, waiting to get their hands on units that don’t exist. We want to provide a hassle-free shopping experience for the massive number of customers we’re expecting to buy the PS3 from Amazon. We aim to rival the smooth way in which we handled the Wii launch.”

Head of games at Woolworths Gerry Berkley added: "We will be battling hard for as many consoles as possible for our customers, but demand will inevitably out-strip supply.

“This is very exciting news for the industry. Our stores will be taking pre-orders in the next few days. This is the hottest gaming system since the PS2 launched in 2000.

“Customers have been asking to pre-order PS3 for some time now."