NGP price: Sony has learnt its lesson
Features dropped to keep cost down.
Now the dust has settled on Sony's Tokyo press conference announcement of the PSP2, codenamed the Next Generation Portable, one question remains unanswered: how much will it cost?
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss Andrew House told Eurogamer the powerful handheld will be "affordable", but the manufacturer has so far refused to pin down the price.
Now another top Sony executive has suggested the NGP won't cost an arm and a leg, citing lessons learnt from the PlayStation 3 – which cost a whopping $599 when it launched.
"There were elements that we found pretty cool, but had to set aside to remain on target," Sony Computer Entertainment president Shuhei Yoshida told the latest issue of Edge magazine.
"It's a big lesson we learnt from the PS3. There's no point putting everything you want into a device and doing the math later. We always had the price and consumer in mind. We had to sell something that people could buy."
Elsewhere, Yoshida revealed other lessons learnt from the PS3 experience.
"We had to make the development environment for NGP as 'easy' as possible," he said.
"Today, many teams are familiar with the PS3 and are used to including a variety of effects in their titles.
"Based on this expertise – and also the working habits they developed working on PS3 – we had to make development on the NGP as natural as possible – an extension of the PS3, if you will."
Earlier this month a source described the NGP to Eurogamer as a "developer's dream".
Sony has not yet dated the system beyond plans to begin rollout worldwide by the end of 2011.