NGP Will Come In Two Flavours: With 3G & Without.

That functionality, according to SCEE boss Andrew House , will be entirely optional however.

"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," House said.

"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."

Apparently Sony's "working hard" on 3G partnerships for the device, though the platform holder has nothing to announce at the moment.

"You'll hear more from us around that aspect of the strategy as we get closer to launch," House added.

Theoretically 3G would keep the NGP connected where ever the user should decide to take it. House was quick to point out that wouldn't necessarily mean online multiplayer as that would "depend very much on the degree of data traffic that's being driven by that online game". House did however talk up the prospect of asynchronous gameplay.

"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."

[source eurogamer.net]