Sony says NGP will be ‘affordable,’ won’t cost $599, WiFi-only version also coming

We had quite the interview with Sony’s Jack Tretton, but we certainly didn’t corner the market on hot new NGP details — Eurogamer and Game Informer quizzed the company’s Andrew House and Shuhei Yoshida, respectively, and came out with some important tidbits about the quad-core gaming handheld , particularly regarding pricing. Though Tretton seemed to suggest we’ll see a price somewhere northward of the Nintendo 3DS’s $250, Yoshida was quoted as saying “It’s not going to be $599,” laughing off the idea that the system would cost as much as the PlayStation 3′s infamous appraisal at launch , and House said that Sony “will shoot for an affordable price that’s appropriate for the handheld gaming space.” While none were willing to cough up a real ballpark estimate, the SCEE president revealed one way that the cost might come down: pushing out a lesser model without cellular connectivity, a strategy we’ve seen before . House said that while all devices come with WiFi, “a separate SKU will have 3G,” making us wonder which of the handheld’s other groundbreaking features might carry a premium. After all, OLED screens don’t come cheap. Find the rest of Eurogamer ‘s excellent interview (including a bit about how Sony will prioritize downloadable content over physical media) at our source link. Sony says NGP will be ‘affordable,’ won’t cost $599, WiFi-only version also coming originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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