Andrew House talks Sony NGP price, 3G version, more

I can't put a ballpark on it in terms of figures, but I think what I would say is that we will shoot for an affordable price that's appropriate for the handheld gaming space.

I think ideally we would want to have our hardware be profitable, in addition to our software. We've experienced both sides and we know which one we like to be on!

I don't right now.

I think we'll have a good, solid battery life because of two factors. It's influenced our choice of flash media, versus incorporating a disc drive; and number two, the screen is large and gorgeous – it's also OLED, which is fantastically good for low power consumption as well. So there's two, I think strong, features there that bode well for battery life.

Yes, and no. So what we're intending to do is have everything available on PlayStation Store, and potentially be on physical media as well.

But I think an area that is exciting for us is, if you have games that are only available for digital download, you remove clearly a huge amount of risk for publishers. What that, we hope, trends to is more innovation, some greater risk-taking creatively, by that flexibility of being able to deliver only in the digital space.

I wouldn't want to call too many things too early, but I think what you'll see in the physical space is the larger, and I mean in terms of data capacity but also in terms of bigger, blockbuster franchises that will probably lend themselves more to the physical medium – you know, big games that you don't necessarily want to spend an awful lot of time downloading.

I think the answer to both those questions is yes. You'll hear more from us around that aspect of the strategy as we get closer to launch. We are working very hard on partnerships in that area.

The first thing to clarify, which I'm not sure the presentation did a perfect job of doing today, is that all of the devices will have wi-fi capability; a separate SKU will have 3G.

So the user gets a choice. Wi-fi is available wherever, which clearly is the most important aspect of connectivity and that connected experience; 3G will be a subset of that.

I'm not sure. [He actually sounds unsure.] I think it would depend very much on the degree of data traffic that's being driven by that online game.

It might depend on the game. One area that I'm particularly excited about is the idea of asynchronous gaming, whereby the game experience is existing either on a PS3 or on your NGP, and then the 3G ability is the real-time, you know, "you're under attack, you've got to go do something"; messaging, just keeping that link with you, which clearly is not very heavy in terms of data traffic, but creates a whole different sense to the experience.

Web browsing features, yes; phone, deliberately no. We've avoided it.

We think that voice capability carries with it a whole other set of expectations, and we want this to be first and foremost the ultimate gaming experience. We've elected not to complicate that proposition overly by trying to have it be all things to all people including voice and a conventional phone. Clearly [PlayStation Suite] addresses an already vibrant phone marketplace that serves that consumer very well.

Clearly in the dedicated portable space, we will be in competition with 3DS.

I know you'll think me coy, but our wish when we enter markets is to grow the overall market and landscape, and find new audiences. So in that space, I think we're more or less generally competing for consumers' time, and that's where we place the highest premium. It's our job to deliver fantastic experiences that merit the consumers' investment of their time with our devices.