Sony NGP Having its Memory Cut? Could Be No Big Deal...

Woke up to a barrage of rumours (all based on one badly translated report) that Sony's NGP handheld might have its internal system memory reduced from 512 to 256MB to save on cost. It might lose the internal user storage (16GB) to be replaced by extra MemorySticks (or something similar) like the PSP uses.

Assuming this is true, the forum commenters have now gone from whining that the NGP would cost too much, to moaning about the risk of it being underpowered. However, the PS3 runs reasonably happily on 256MB and while new generation iPhones and Androids have 512MB/1GB of memory, they are multi-purpose devices that need to cater for a range of uses, while the NGP is all about the games, and shouldn't suffer as much.

Losing the user storage means an added cost to us, but £18 for an 8GB stick isn't too bad in the big scheme of things, as long as Sony doesn't come up with another new format and try ramping up the prices, in which case everyone should get upset.

Do you think Sony would deliberately bork their machine's chances of success for the want of a couple of dollars of extra memory or do you think Sony knows what it needs to produce a winning machine? And remember all those original pics had SPECIFICATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE stamped on them, so we have no solid right to moan about it.