Sony has announced that the price of its latest PlayStation 3 bundle, which will come with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue thrown in, will be £299.99 - effectively making the game free.

For your £299.99 you'll get a 40GB PS3, a Sixaxis and a Blu-ray disc copy of GT5 Prologue.

If you already have a PS3 you'll have to spend some cash to get your mitts on the game. It will be available as a download or boxed copy for £24.99. The download will be available on Thursday 27th March, while the bundle and hard copy of the game will be available the next day.

The previous 40GB PS3 pick and mix bundles, complete with two games, cost £349. So, does Sony agree with SPOnG that it is effectively making GT5 Prologue free in the bundle? We asked a Sony Computer Entertainment Europe representative and were told, "Yes."

That brought another couple of questions to mind. Is today's news in any way a reaction to Microsoft's announcement yesterday that it will cut the price of the Xbox 360? "We're not going to comment on that", the rep told SPOnG.

Is the free bundling of the game due to Sony having a backlog of hardware inventory that it wants to shift? "I can't comment on that", SPOnG was told.

You may have noticed that a DualShock 3 controller is, disappointingly, not part of the bundle - despite the fact that the game is equipped with rumble compatibility. It could be that, rather than having too many buxom consoles sat in warehouses, SCEE wants to push all its Sixaxis controllers out into the world in order to make room for the aforementioned Dual Shock 3 controllers.

If you want to swot up on GT5 Prologue before it arrives, check out SPOnG's review here. You can find yet more details, including a rundown of the cars on offer, here.