Well this is somewhat distressing. French tech news site 01net has reported that Sony's upcoming NGP may have been drastically scaled down in order to compete with Nintendo's 3DS price-point. There's been a lot of talk in the past couple months regarding the as-yet-unannounced price for the handheld, with Sony all but confirming something between three and four-hundred. It seems this didn't sit well with consumers, as recent surveys taken about the product have been less-than-stellar regarding the pricey handheld. While Sony originally promised the NGP would be "affordable" (undoubtedly remembering the price-rage over the PS3), it seems they may be taking a step further in trying to match Nintendo's trademark affordability. However, Sony would only say in a press release to developers that the system would be "very reasonable."

The report, which is still mostly rumor, claims that the RAM for the system has been cut in half, from 256MB to 128MB, and that the internal memory, originally set for 16GB of flash memory, will now be bolstered by external storage cards. The site does say that the GPU seems to be untouched, though. This is a little worrying, although if Sony does plan to use cartridges for their games, it may be less of an issue. The report also stated that Sony is scaling back the handheld's OS, so that more of the RAM may be available.

I can see how cutting uncessary costs to meet affordability concerns may be a good move for Sony, but I also know that many gamers were enchanted by the idea of a portable graphics powerhouse. A price drop could help Sony compete during the holiday season, but has that video of a handheld Uncharted become a thing of the past? What of the talk for different models and pricing options? One can also wonder if any other features are on the chopping block, if any. Undoubtedly, we will hear more as E3 rolls around the corner.