How much for the NGP?

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."

How much would you pay for a next generation portable? With new technology pushing gaming to its limits every day, how will consumers adjust to rising prices? Every generation of consoles has brought with it a new price tag for consumers in the video game market. Not until this generation, however, have we seen such a dramatic rise in the cost of how much we pay for portable gaming. Back when the gameboy was the only real hand held gaming system on the market, consumers were able to bye each successive advance in the product at a low more affordable price. With the competition between Sony and Nintendo, both the playstation portable and the nintendo ds raised the prices of portable gaming. As the next generation of portable gaming is set to arrive many are predicting prices of each individual unit to be as much as three to four hundred dollars. Compare that to the launch of the current generation home consoles and we can see that portable gaming has almost reached the same price points as its powerhouse home systems. What has caused portable gaming to become so expensive? Is it the cost of innovative new technologies? Is it the competitive nature of the market? Regardless, it is costing more for gamers who want to play on the go.