Last week, Sony finally put what seemed like a millenium’s worth of rumours to bed by unveiling its successor to the PSP at an event in Tokyo.

The PSP2 – codenamed NGP (Next Generation Portable) until something better pops into the marketing team’s mind – boasts incredibly formidable hardware specs, led triumphantly by a quad-core CPU, front and rear touch pads, and a 5-inch OLED screen.

Two pieces of speculation surrounding the new portable console that went either unanswered or partially answered at the big unveil, though, were pricing and release date.

The price of quality

In an interview with Engadget, SCEA president Jack Tretton was asked about the former and more specifically for his thoughts on the recently announced 3DS’s $250 price tag.

“I think that if you could create content that consumers see as compelling, they'll find money that they didn't think they had," said Tretton.

“So I think if the quality's there, then the people will find a way to buy it, within reason.”

Just quite how reasonable that ‘reason’ is remains to be seen, and according to the high ranking official, Sony probably won’t elucidate any further until after E3 in June.

Failure to launch?

While the launch of the NGP itself had been tentatively earmarked for 2011’s holiday season during the product presentation, Tretton raised concerns about Sony delivering a global rollout in that time frame.

“I think our goal is always to launch [during the] holidays when the majority of sales are done. You want to have a worldwide simultaneous launch," explained Tretton.

“Having said that, this’ll be our sixth platform launch, and it’s very difficult to have the quantities to be able to launch on a worldwide basis on the same date...I think our goal is, we would get at least one territory out by the end of holiday 2011.”

And if I were a betting man, I’d almost certainly place all of my chips on Japan being that territory; Sony's traditional launch strategy being Japan, North America and then Europe, up to six months later. 

[source: Engadget]