As the holiday season slowly approaches, the war for budget tablet supremacy is heating up. While the Nexus 7 is hands down the king of budget at this time, market pioneers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble don’t plan on idly sitting by. Both companies are beginning to prepare for their upcoming models as they discount and discontinue current models.

When we got wind of an 8GB Nook Tablet hitting Walmart stores this Wednesday we wondered when or if Barnes & Noble would make an official announcement. Well, that day is today and they have officially taken the wraps off of their cheaper 8GB Nook Tablet model. You’ll be getting all the same features as the 16GB model minus 8GB of storage and 512MB of RAM. The good news is it will only cost $199 and be on point with the Kindle Fire as one of the best priced tablets money can buy. Barnes & Noble also announced a price drop in the Nook Color, which is now being offered for $169. For the full details check out the press release after the break.

Barnes & Noble isn’t happy that the Kindle Fire has gobbled up tablet market share while their Nook Tablet is the better spec’d tablet. While the Nook Tablet costs only $50 more than the Kindle Fire, it looks like that $50 makes all the difference. To better compete against the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble has decided to release an 8GB version of their Nook Tablet at the same price as the Kindle Fire. According to an internal Walmart document obtained by The Verge, this 8GB Nook Tablet is set to hit stores this Wednesday.