After much speculation regarding joint venture Sony Ericsson's "PlayStation Phone", the Xperia Play was officially revealed yesterday through a U.S. Super Bowl ad.
The advert ended with a "PlayStation Certified" logo, along with those familiar PlayStation square, circle, triangle and X buttons. There still does not appear to be any PlayStation branding on the device, however.
An Xperia Play Facebook page has now surfaced, along with a date for the full announcement. The page states "Tune in on Sunday and witness a new era in the world of smartphones", along with a time and date for each region, including Sunday 13th February 10:00 a.m. PST for the US.
A hands-on with the Xperia Play last month revealed that the device will sport a touch-sensitive pad, found between the regular PlayStation style controls.
It was originally expected that more information regarding the Xperia Play would arise at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 14th. Given that the date on the Xperia Play Facebook page is now a day before that, it's anyone's guess as to what will be revealed and where.
The Xperia Play is a separate device from Sony's recently unveiled NGP device, the follow-up to the PlayStation Portable.
The Xperia Play will likely be the first mobile device that meets Sony's "PlayStation Certified" licensing program, which standardizes Android-based phones for playing older PlayStation games and other titles.
This is definitely what the Playstation Suite was intended to debut on.
As regards to 'catching on', keep in mind that this is essentially just an android cellphone, something that even Sony Ericsson themselves will be releasing multiple competitors for just within the next few months. As such, success has to be defined within that space. To put it another way, should this thing sell 5 million units it would definitely be considered a success, while if the NGP did the same it would be considered a complete failure.
My question though is this: will both devices play the same games, or even have the same game engines? I don't use a smartphone...so I really only look at what I can do with it for gaming.
Which games will play on which devices is a little unclear at the moment. Games designed for PSP2/NGP will definitely not play on this phone, which is a fairly standard Android phone (apart from the controls) reportedly with a 1GHz single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM and an 854x480 screen, all fairly similar to the higher-end Android phones released in the last year. As such, it's dramatically less powerful than the quad-core NGP, and also lacks key features like the back touch panel and the memory card slot that games will sell at retail on.
As for whether 'Playstation Suite' games will be playable on the NGP, that's a little fuzzier. At the playstation event they report this:
"Sony added that "newly-developed content" for PS Suite will also be playable on the company's upcoming Next Generation Portable dedicated gaming hardware"
Which is a bit ambiguous. It seems to imply that the PS1 games on the store won't work on NGP, but future titles might be? I'm guessing here, but hopefully they'll explain this stuff a little better at MWC next week.
Sony is doing an odd thing with their strategy...though it could work.
They have a dedicated gaming device--NGP--which would be for core gamers(?)
Then they have a phone/dedicated gaming device- for individuals that have a want for a single pocket device but is more heavily toned to gaming(?)
I fall in the NGP category...but I know plenty of people would fall into latter category. I guess they are just diversifying---which could be a hit or miss---they could benefit from this strategy. In my opinion I think it may just work because the gaming community is getting so much more diverse and separated. The software choices and platforms are all over the board now--it might just be a way for Sony to grab up a little bit of everything.
1) So they want to take their mediocre portable games platform and meld it with their mediocre mobile hand-set devision..
2) ?
3) Profit.
I don't know, maybe it's a genius move, but I recall Sony saying their mobile devision operates separately from their games devision so they couldn't respond to the questions of a broader strategy..
I really don't think this is going to catch on though... just my humble opinion though.
As regards to 'catching on', keep in mind that this is essentially just an android cellphone, something that even Sony Ericsson themselves will be releasing multiple competitors for just within the next few months. As such, success has to be defined within that space. To put it another way, should this thing sell 5 million units it would definitely be considered a success, while if the NGP did the same it would be considered a complete failure.
My question though is this: will both devices play the same games, or even have the same game engines? I don't use a smartphone...so I really only look at what I can do with it for gaming.
As for whether 'Playstation Suite' games will be playable on the NGP, that's a little fuzzier. At the playstation event they report this:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32664/PlayStation_Suite_Addresses_ Sonys_Smart
phone_Gaming_Gap.php
"Sony added that "newly-developed content" for PS Suite will also be playable on the company's upcoming Next Generation Portable dedicated gaming hardware"
Which is a bit ambiguous. It seems to imply that the PS1 games on the store won't work on NGP, but future titles might be? I'm guessing here, but hopefully they'll explain this stuff a little better at MWC next week.
They have a dedicated gaming device--NGP--which would be for core gamers(?)
Then they have a phone/dedicated gaming device- for individuals that have a want for a single pocket device but is more heavily toned to gaming(?)
I fall in the NGP category...but I know plenty of people would fall into latter category. I guess they are just diversifying---which could be a hit or miss---they could benefit from this strategy. In my opinion I think it may just work because the gaming community is getting so much more diverse and separated. The software choices and platforms are all over the board now--it might just be a way for Sony to grab up a little bit of everything.
But I think my first response was..
1) So they want to take their mediocre portable games platform and meld it with their mediocre mobile hand-set devision..
2) ?
3) Profit.
I don't know, maybe it's a genius move, but I recall Sony saying their mobile devision operates separately from their games devision so they couldn't respond to the questions of a broader strategy..