With around 500,000 machines now in UK circulation, the PS2’s first six months seem to have gone pretty well, especially given the initial supply difficulties. But if you look just a fraction beyond the bare numbers to see what’s actually happening on the High Street, the story is a little different. In order to shift those PS2s, retailers are being forced to unilaterally implement some of the biggest discounts on a brand-new platform in the history of the games industry, obliterating their own, already-slim, profit margins in the process. Even if you forget about the traditionally-cheaper online sector for a moment, consumers can easily find deals in bricks-and-mortar stores offering up to a whacking 33% off PS2 hardware and software, with some stores taking hits of up to £85 off RRP in order to shift some stock. Armed only with a notepad and an inquisitive nature, I jumped into the car and took a random sample of the nation’s PS2-retailing temperature.

WH SMITH, BATH

Offers: All PS2 software 3 for the price of 2.

Discount: Up to £45, or 33%.

By now, of course, you should already be aware of this particular situation. It is, in fact, easily the most spectacular and potentially alarming episodes of the PS2 story so far. Buy two PS2 games in Smith’s – any two at all, not some limited selection of B-titles – and the store will give you another one of your choice, also from the full range, absolutely free, the 33% discount practically wiping out the retailer’s entire margin. An additional 20% discount from the firm’s online arm turns the games into a loss-leader. Try as we might, no-one from WHS would offer a comment on this subject beyond the generic and anonymous one below, so the question of whether they have, as was recently suggested by a rival, "dropped their pants" must remain sadly unanswered for now.

"WH Smith strives to offer its customers great value, and our current promotion on PS2 games fully meets these criteria." – quote supplied to us by the WHS Promotions department, accompanied by the request "Could you just credit it to ‘a spokesman’, please?" And having come out with dynamite like that, who could blame them?

GAME, BRISTOL

Offers: PS2 with any three games for £350

Discount: Up to £90, or around 26%

Game stores have a variety of local promotions. The Bristol store, for example, has the offer listed above, whereas other branches are offering a deal whereby you get the machine and any two games for £350, but if you also buy a peripheral (from £20), you get another game from a list including Smuggler’s Run and Midnight Club thrown in for free, which is effectively a discount of about £85, or 23%.

ELECTRONICS BOUTIQUE, BATH/BRISTOL

Offers: Various

Discount: Up to £90, or around 26%

Having recently published some very impressive profit figures, you’d expect everything in the EB garden to be rosy. But even here, hefty sums are being hacked off PS2 margins in order to shift units. The Bristol branch of the chain was matching the local "PS2 and any three games for £350" offer, but even the Bath branch was chucking in three games for your extra 50 quid, the difference being that you had to choose one of several pre-set bundles. Even so, there were quality games like Quake 3 and Timesplitters available in the various packs.

DIXONS, BRISTOL/BATH

Offers: PS2 with any three games for £350; PS2 plus various extras (see below) £450

Discount: Up to £130 (29%)

Again, the Bristol branch of Dixons was matching local competition. But nationwide deals in the chain are in fact even better, discount-wise. Nationally the store offers a choice of deals at various prices, with the best being a console, four games from a large list, two DVDs from a smaller list, a Ferrari steering wheel and a carrying bag, all for £450, which works out at a saving of £130, or 29%.

"The price is a local thing – we have a lot of game stores in the area, and we’ve had to do this offer to remain competitive in the town. But it has really increased interest – before the discount, we had a great stock of them and they just weren’t selling at all, but they seem to be moving again now." - Kim Child, Deputy Manager, Bristol

CHOICES VIDEO, BATH

Offers: PS2, any two games, extra joypad, six free game rentals £350

Discount: £70 (20%)

PS2 games rent at £3.50 for two nights at Choices, so with some of the more short-lived PS2 titles, that £21 of free rentals could actually save you up to £250 on games that you’d only play for a weekend anyway, lifting the offer into a league of its own…

ARGOS/COMET, BATH

Offers: PS2 and any two games £355

Discount: Up to £50 (14%)/Up to £90 (26%)

Neither of these chains had bundle deals which compared to their local competition. However, it’s worth noting that Comet offer a price-match guarantee, so you could actually get the same prices as the cheaper stores if you really wanted to buy your PS2 at Comet for some reason.

EPLAY, BATH

Offers: PS2 and any two games £350

Discount: Up to £50 (14%)

In the face of another unremarkable bundle offer, I decided to try a different tack. Having recently come by a bunch of PS2 games that I just couldn’t face even loading up (no names, no pack drill) and which hence hadn’t even been removed from their cellophane packaging, I decided to see what an exchange shop would offer me for them. Recalling that at the height of the PS1’s success, brand-new unopened games had been fetching 25-30 quid a throw, I donned a false moustache and beard and a top hat, adopted a theatrical limp and hobbled down to the local branch of exchange chain Eplay. Presenting a total of eight unopened games (nearly all in the top 20, and including some very triple-A names indeed) with a street price of £300, I sat back expectantly awaiting an offer of purchase somewhere not too far short of £200. I almost dropped my monocle when after running the barcodes through the till, the assistant waved just £87 in slightly grubby banknotes at me. Seeing my surprise, and perhaps fearful on account of the ugly-looking stick-on scar on my right cheek, the assistant ran down the list of games detailing the price offered for each one (as low as a tenner for games still retailing at £40, up to a paltry £16 for a game that’s still in the PS2 top five), and explained "There’s just no demand". Certainly, as I hung dejectedly around the Easter-holidays-busy store for some time afterwards, there was no sign of any – pretty much every customer was interested in PS1 stuff or enquiring about the Game Boy Advance – and I limped off home, the bag full of unsold games weighing heavily on my plastercasted arm.

IT’S BEEN A HARD DAY’S SHOP

It’s not only consumer apathy that High Street retailers have had to contend with in regard to the PS2. Back in March, readers of some "quality" tabloid newspapers were intrigued to notice full-page adverts taken out by a company offering PS2s for the bargain price of £199. Surprised punters deluged the firm with enquiries, at which point (having initially explained the offer as a market-share-building exercise) it panicked and immediately withdrew the offer without having taken any money. Given the price of advertising in the national press, the whole episode remains something of a mystery.

More worryingly, though, the previous month had seen e-tailer theslammer.com contacting its thousands of customers offering them a PS2 at the too-good-to-be-true tag of just £149. The firm’s website was confusing, contradictory and cagily-worded, but if you knew exactly where to look, the offer – which was supposedly valid for that weekend only – in fact invited customers to buy a PS2 for the standard price of £299. Nowhere on the actual order form was the reduced price mentioned, but elsewhere on the site theslammer.com promised a £150 cashback on all orders, to be refunded by cheque "within six to eight weeks" of the console being delivered (which itself would supposedly take place within 48 hours). Your reporter donned his investigating hat and placed an order for one of the bargain machines on February 25.

Some time passed, with Internet discussion groups alive with debate about the offer. Almost three PS2-less weeks later (March 14), an email arrived from theslammer.com’s Customer Services department apologising for the delay, blaming the company’s courier firm and promising to be in touch no later than March 19 to arrange a delivery date. (Though there was no explanation of why it needed to be "arranged" at all, rather than simply sent.) At the time of writing (2 May, a further six weeks later and over two full months after the placing of the order and the debiting of my credit card), your reporter is still awaiting that call, despite several attempts by phone and email to contact the company. Several disgruntled customers have alerted the Trading Standards Office, but theslammer.com remains impossible to contact.