An email from the firm last Friday guaranteed 5,000 consumers that they could be one of the ‘lucky few’ to pick up a PS3 on March 23rd – so long as they committed to buying a PS3, a 4GB PSP and two PSP games for £674.99.

HMV has now widened its PS3 offer to include taking ‘normal' pre-order deposits in store and on the web. It has continued the online PSP online, but customers of the deal will no longer be prioritised at launch.

“We won’t be following HMV’s lead on the PSP pre-order bundle, because we won’t hold our customers to ransom,” head of games at Choices UK Martin Baxter told MCV.

Head of promotions and PR at Virgin Megastores Stephen Lynn added: “HMV’s deal is up to them at the end of the day, but it’s not the sort of thing we’d offer our customers because we’re trying to keep things simple on PS3. We wouldn’t want to risk confusing our customers over any product – let alone one of this expense.”

 A spokesperson for HMV said the firm refuses to comment on the opinions of other retailers.