Ben-DutkaIt's the single biggest detail that is yet to be discovered: price.
Journalists, analysts and gamers are all waiting for Sony to price the Next Generation Portable, and estimates have been flying all over the Internet ever since that nifty handheld was announced. However, we did hear that GameStop had the unit in their database with a $299 price tag, and that rumor has now – evidently – been confirmed. You can see the leaked screenshot in question ; it's a GameStop computer screen with price listings for two Nintendo 3DS models and the NGP. As you can see, the latter is priced at $299, as we had initially heard. The reason why some claim this is realistic is because if the retailer doesn't have a price, they often use a placeholder cost of $999 that shows up in the system. Those who have worked at GameStop say the emergence of this $299 price tag is solid evidence and quite reliable. However, we're not ready to fly with that for one main reason:
It seems Sony doesn't even have a set price in their heads. According to boss Kaz Hirai, they actually can't assign a price to the NGP because the device is still in the prototype phase . If Sony doesn't know, we're fairly certain GameStop doesn't know. Therefore, until we actually hear some sort of update from Sony that the NGP has exited that phase, we can't really tell consumers to expect a $299 price. That would be most agreeable, though, would it not?