The NGP has been rumored numerous times to be delayed. Part of the reason was the recent Japan Earthquake which shock the whole Japan and did a lot of damage to its Economy. Japan is still recovering from this disaster. This was not the only factor which affected Sony, Last month, Playstation Network Security was breached and millions of user account info were stolen. This event just angered the world and the pressure fell on Sony to implement proper measures for security which reportedly costed Sony a lot of money.
Now 1up.com is reporting by quoting 01.net that Sony may downgrade some of the NGP specs in order to fit it in the Holidays 2011 deadline for Japan. The NGP was confirmed for release this holiday in Japan while it will be released for the rest of the world in 2012.
01.net claims that the non-3G models of NGP will be priced similar to the 3DS so that they have a competitive advantage over the 3DS which means we can expect non-3G models to be somewhere between the $250 to $300 range. This could come with a price as the earlier reported 512 MB RAM has been rumored to be cut down to 256 MB in order to compensate with the cost. The 128 MB of graphics memory is still there but Sony is planning to cut the 16 GB of internal flash memory according to this rumor.
Since this is just a rumor, it won’t necessarily be true. We can only hope that Sony manages to keep the NGP reasonably priced. We will keep you updated regarding any news, keep checking us regularly.
Source: 1UP