Microsoft’s Xbox division has been taking every opportunity to poke a little fun at their console counterparts at Sony as the Japanese giant launches its PlayStation 3 console in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Now, things have been a little flat in launch-land for Sony as midnight launches across the globe have apparently fallen on deaf ears. In New Zealand only handfuls of people turned up at electronics stores to collect their pre-ordered consoles at midnight as most preferred to stay at home and wait till a more civilized hour to pick up. Bloggers the world over have been reporting empty queues, tumbleweed-a-blowin’ and endless Microsoft pranks.

In Paris a waterside PS3 launch venue saw a giant boat float by with ”Xbox loves you„ plastered all over it. Here at PC World towers we received a vibrating box containing an Xbox 360 controller (poking tongues at the fact Sony removed the rumble feature from its new controllers). Although scoring another controller was a nice little bonus, we feel the guys down at the Gameplanet store in Auckland had a better score -- $480 worth of beer. That’s the difference in price between the Xbox 360 and the PS3 you see.

Very smarmy indeed you Microsofties. Check out the happy GP lads as they covet their haul of liquid gold as reported by NZGamer.com.

Actually, we're not sure who thought of it first but the whole beer-for PS3 thing was also done by Microsoft in the UK. A marketing technique I for one am all in favour of. Exactly how accurate it is we're not quite so sure of however. MS are using the $719 price of the standard Xbox 360 versus the $1199 price of the PS3. If you add in all the Xbox 360 extras you'd have to buy to bring the console up to the same spec as the PS3 ($949 for the HD-DVD bundle plus $150 for a wireless adapter) and you'd only end up with a couple of dozen DB's. That and you'd still be 40GB shy of hard drive space given the PS3's 60GB drive versus the Xbox 360's 20GB drive.

Still, as Steve Jobs will tell you... marketing doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with truth.

UPDATE: Turns out it wasn't Microsoft flinging free booze around the place after all. DB were the generous souls behind this stack of free beer. They'd obviously seen the Microsoft stunt in the UK and decided they'd be up for some of that cheap publicity too. Nice one DB. Our delivery address is Level 1, 80 Greys Ave, Auckland...