PlayStation-Based Mobile Handset a Possibility

Speaking with Financial Times, Hideki Komiyama, president of Sony Ericsson, raised the possibility of a mobile handset based on PlayStation gaming. The company has been struggling to find an answer to current smartphones, and they plan to release three new models within the next year which run Symbian, Android, and Windows Mobile. Komiyama likened a PlayStation-related handset to the music-based Walkman handset and the camera-based Cybershot handset. Quoting the FT: "He expresses interest in Sony Ericsson carving out a niche for itself based on Sony's strength in gaming. He says a PlayStation mobile, building on the Walkman and Cybershot phones, 'could happen.'"

Comments

First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone had to say it.

No, seriously though. This will end up being the new n-Gage, if the precident set by Sony's release of the PlayStation 3 is anything to go by.

*disclaimer* I am a Sony Fanperson.

Re:First Post

[lee1026]

Considering how well camera phones are doing, I really don't think the "just a phone" sentiment is really what is successful in the marketplace. The iphone did a lot, and it sold a lot. And what is the most popular apps on the iphone? Games. It is logical to think, therefore, that a good game playing cell phone would sell, and if it did not, it would not be because it have too many features.

Re:First Post

[_merlin]

Under 30, had a mobile phone for over a decade, was an early adopter of UMTS 3G (I had one of those huge first-generation NEC UMTS/GSM hybrid phones). I use my phone as a phone, and occasionally take a picture with it if I haven't got my camera with me. I occasionally use web/email on it, too, or use it as an HSDPA modem if I need the 'net on the go.

But I can see my phone is crap as a camera, web browser, game system, etc. The screen is too small to be a decent web browser or game system, the controls are designed for dialing a phone and navigating simple menus - not typing or playing games (which are at odds with each other, anyway). It's one of those Nokias with a Karl Zeiss lens on the camera, but it's still crap compared to my Casio compact camera (which itself isn't much bigger than the phone). Playing games or using the camera drains the battery. It's best to use it as a phone.

I have two Nintendo DS Lites, and I can say the DS is a good game system. The screens are bright and clear, the battery life is acceptable, and the controls are good for jabbing at with your thumbs. It would be horrible as a phone, though. The controls would be all wrong, it wouldn't fit in my pocket, etc. Jamming a phone into my compact camera would be a similarly bad idea.

It's cool to have additional functionality in a phone that can be used in a pinch when you don't have the real thing (games when I don't have the DS, camera when I don't have the Casio, web browser when I don't have a computer), but it should be designed primarily as a phone, or its usefulness as a phone will suffer, and trying to jam a phone into other devices would be a similar failure.

The extended iPod

[G3ckoG33k]

"Actually the iPhone sold well because it is an apple product."

That is silly. Most of the people buying the iPhone, in terms of numbers, would probably be too young to have an idea of what is Apple Inc.

And, thy are definitely too young to realize about the Mac vs Wintel wars of two decades ago...

In fact, they might be more aware of Ubuntu versus Vista. But, to be honest, I don't think they even know of that.

They probably think of the iPhone as the mobile phone version of iPod, without realizing what is the name of the company behind it.

Re:The extended iPod

[Dogtanian]

Actually the iPhone sold well because it is an apple product. The phone itself sucks balls.

That is silly. Most of the people buying the iPhone, in terms of numbers, would probably be too young to have an idea of what is Apple Inc. [..] They probably think of the iPhone as the mobile phone version of iPod, without realizing what is the name of the company behind it.

That's pretty unlikely- I suspect that the vast majority certainly *do* "know" who Apple is. Yes, that's almost certainly via the success of the iPod, and it's quite probable that a significant number neither know nor care that Apple produces the Mac.

Still, however it got there, Apple is well-known and associated with fashionable technology.

While the majority of iPod/iPhone buyers almost certainly aren't as obsessed with Apple as the disproportionately vocal fanboy contingent, most of the potential audience will know Apple and associate them with "cool".

FWIW, I don't think that the iPhone sold solely because it was an Apple.

IMHO calling it a "phone" is also misleading. The iPhone is essentially a modern PDA with communications facilities; it's not really seen as such because PDAs fell out of favour a few years back and the iPhone arrived there via the phone route. But I suspect that had PDAs continued to sell and evolve, we'd have arrived in a similar place in 2009. No-one would buy the iPhone if it was simply just a phone, even a souped-up one with some nice tweaks.

Re:Mobile Cell CPU

[w0mprat]

Mobile Cell chips could be simply the lower-grade chips with just one or a few DSPs working, but otherwise superfast (3.2GHz PPC, wicked fast bus, etc).

You're forgetting just how much power cell processors chug down. Even with only 1 or 2 SPEs and a downclocked PPC core and a narrower slower bus you won't be anywhere near a 1-3 watt envelope that's tolerable in something you can hold in your hand (ie. 2 hour battery life at full load). Try more like 15watts for the most cut-down cell.

Sony is likely to not be reinventing the wheel too much. MIPS32 architecture which already works well in the PSP (which has two of these processors). We'll be something similar along those lines, with up to day specs of course. Unfortunatley sony will be needing some new silicon if they want to get cell-compatible technology into the phone.