Now this is an interesting bit of news – French tech site 01net claims that Sony is in a quandary right now, and they might resort to lowering costs and cutting corners for the future NGP (Next Generation Portable) in order to compete with the Nintendo 3DS’ price point of $249, making it gimped on paper before it is even released. As a gamer who is looking forward to this new handheld console, what do you think of Sony’s tactic? Is it wise to lower its costs to play on a similar price point level? I would have thought that Sony would sell the NGP at a higher price point because it offers more processing firepower – just like how the PS3 cost a whole lot more than the Wii, and it wasn’t that Sony didn’t make money back in the end.
The same website claims that the NGP which was supposed to come with 512MB RAM will now ship with half that amount, while losing the 16GB of internal memory that will be replaced by memory cards instead – hopefully none of the Memory Stick nonsense – bring on the SDXC format instead!
If that proves to be true, just heave a sigh of relief that its 128MB graphics memory has not fallen under the axe. With lower specs, at least we can sort of expect a more competitive price point – hovering around the $250 mark, perhaps?