With the early console battle still raging, we find that the fight may be taking a nice, albeit strange, turn of events.

First we start with Sony’s Folding@Home project. The premise here is that each PS3, while running, and not gaming, will aid in the complex study of protein folding, all going back to Stanford University’s nifty computers where it could be used in research of Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases. This leads one to believe Sony is leaning more and more on the power of the PS3, and not its ability to host worthy games.

The Wii may have bowling, but it sure ain’t curing cancer!

Next up is Nintendo’s donation of a huge amount of Nintendo DS’s and games to the Child’s Play charity started by the authors of Penny Arcade. The “Donation” in reality was sold to the Charity at a huge discount, not technically donated.If I was a sickly youth, I too would love to marvel at hundreds of video games filling a room to the brim. Actually, I’m marveling as we speak!

We now turn back to Sony to see that, even though their less-than-stellar launch of the PS3 in Europe may have even more to do with the console’s slow decline, they still don’t forget to do well for the player that stands in the cold, or in this case the brisk evening air, for hours to get their grubby hands on a new PS3. Sony decided that with the release in London, England, the first 100 people in line would get a free 46″ LCD TV with their purchase of their PS3. This could be a sign that Sony is trying to really regain its friendliness with gamers, but it has the distinct odor of a PR stunt, mostly because the number of others that either pre-ordered theirs or were anywhere else in the world received diddley-squat for freebies from Sony.

I expect Microsoft to come with an announcement of free 360’s or copies of vista to underprivileged children in Africa soon.

[Folding@Home/Yahoo! Games/Penny-Arcade]