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Sony Unveils First PlayStation Phone
KRK-TR writes "Sony Ericsson has unveiled the first 'PlayStation phone,' called the Xperia Play. The device resembles a regular smart phone but has gaming buttons that slide out from beneath the screen."
Eurogamer got some hands-on time with the device, and they had this to say: "The recessed digital controls are precise and responsive but have a hard, microswitch-style 'click' to them which contrasts with the soft, springy touch of a PSP or a Dual Shock pad. There are left and right shoulder buttons recessed into the handset – you need to find these with the tips of your index fingers, rather than the joints as you're used to. The most interesting inputs are the twin circular touch-pads between the buttons. These effectively replace the on-screen virtual analogue sticks that blight so many smartphone games – and they do the job well. ... Despite the nominal similarity to PSPgo, it doesn't bear any family resemblance to or design hallmarks of SCE products, and indeed is only passingly identifiable as a Sony Ericsson phone. It's very much an anonymous Android handset with the added novelty of game controls."
Fuck sony
To Little to late...
"Xperia Play"? Are you serious? It sounds like some Chinese knockoff.
Reminds me of this bit from "Objectified", quoting roughly:
"So the stats come, our average customer is a woman about 30-s early 40-s, has 2 point 3 children on average. I interrupted him. I said, don't give me the average, give me the extremes, the average will take care of itself naturally"
If you are a gamer enough that you'd want your phone to come with a thick joystick pad, wouldn't you rather go the extra inch, and get yourself a separate PSP, that is the solid experience, and then some phone, as you need.
I think most will.
Many phones make great casual gaming devices. But this poor hybrid will see the same sad destiny as other gaming phones we've seen in the past.
Oh and if you get it, don't get carried away playing for too long, or else you can't make critical calls on a wasted battery. Sucks, I know.
This is about two years too late, Sony. And while you were busy trying to pedal the Go, your chief competitor was putting tens of millions of their units in consumers' hands and building an impressive library of inexpensive games.
Oh, just got a phone call on my iPhone. Nokia and Palm want to know if you're free tonight.
If you are a gamer enough that you'd want your phone to come with a thick joystick pad, wouldn't you rather go the extra inch, and get yourself a separate PSP, that is the solid experience, and then some phone, as you need.
Except PSP can't run the specific game you want to play because Sony declines to give its developer a license to develop for PSP. Lately, Sony has even been seen to sue those who enable homebrew on its platforms. But this isn't Sony's platform; it's Google's, and the majority of Android-powered phones and tablets have "Unknown sources" and "USB debugging" switches that explicitly allow homebrew. This report on a forum claims that Xperia Play, like most Android-powered devices not sold by AT&T, is expected to have the "Unknown sources" switch.
Why the hell would I buy some Sony POS that they are liable to brick or not let me make calls on if it doesn't have updated firmware every 2 weeks. Sony can lick my fat sack. I *almost* lifted my 10 year ban on Sony products and bought a PS3 prior to Christmas, bought an Xbox instead. Boy am I ever glad I stuck to my guns.
As a poster above said. Fuck sony. No way those asshats get a single dime off me after all they've done.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
So it's a new N-Gage.
And Sony thinks that THIS TIME it will be successful? They really have lost touch with reality.
You have no idea how disappointed I was when I found out it couldn't play PSP games - that I thought it would be able to based on it's name.
"So the stats come, our average customer is a woman about 30-s early 40-s, has 2 point 3 children on average. I interrupted him. I said, don't give me the average, give me the extremes, the average will take care of itself naturally"
You do realize that THAT is exactly where N-Gage came from? The very extreme value on the curve representing a normal distribution of mobile phone users.
If you are a gamer enough that you'd want your phone to come with a thick joystick pad, wouldn't you rather go the extra inch, and get yourself a separate PSP, that is the solid experience, and then some phone, as you need.
But if you are a gamer looking for a new "smart" phone, and along comes such a phone by a major manufacturer of phones AND game consoles, and such phone happens to also be a dedicated gaming console...
Yeah... you're absolutely right.
You should instead buy 3 iPhones and an iPad (make that 2 iPads), and 5 iPods and you'd be all set. I mean... we all know that iPad is actually the future of gaming.
And you should always have your gadgets completely separated. One for music, one for video watching, one for video recording, one for storage, one for audio recording, one for audio listening, one for a flashlight, one for a fleshlight...
Many phones make great casual gaming devices. But this poor hybrid will see the same sad destiny as other gaming phones we've seen in the past.
But, but, but... you just said that phones are great casual gaming devices. You mean to say all these phones were actually abysmal failures?
Or are you actually saying that it will be an iPhone killer?
Oh and if you get it, don't get carried away playing for too long, or else you can't make critical calls on a wasted battery. Sucks, I know.
Yeah... I know. I hate when Wi-Fi does that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...come Christmas time.
On a positive side, many gamers will actually get to see the world. The one outside.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
My Verizon contract will be up in ~18 months (July 2012) and by then maybe there will be a decent version of this. Unless I am remembering something else entirely there will a "framework" or whatever that will allow for these ExperiaPlay-whatever games to run on multiple devices. Like a runtime or DRM layer or something, I don't know. Anyway the point is if these things are improved in 18 months and it's still Android that does everything a normal android does I think I might consider one of these. Maybe the gamepad-like button set will also make emulators that much easier to approach. And it will still be subsidized instead of $400 and work as an actual phone I hope...
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
loading . . .
Use an OPEN OS, close the F%@K out of it, and sell it. Whay am I not surprised. As stated in post #1 F##K SONY and the Nintendo's success they rode in on
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Bah..it's a Sony - the vermin of the consumer electronics industry. There is no way they are getting another dime from me .... ever. If it was from a reputable vendor I might have been interested. Do you have to wait five minutes before you can make every call while it downloads new firmware to patch its in-built root-kit?
I assume I can play any emulator using the slideout (android is already prepared for a d-pad), making me independant of sony if I wish -- they probably have little to do with sonyericsson and android anyway.
...for stupidity. Normal distribution... she is a very strict bitch. But a sexy one too.
And anyone can ring her bell, IF you know what I mean. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more...
What kind of morons do you hang around with?
Depends. Sometimes they are your regular morons, and sometimes they just don't get the jokes like the ones I made in the post above.
Those just get the "Whoosh!" sound instead. A very peculiar phenomenon indeed.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm sure that it will be n-gageing.
I'm NaN, I'm a free variable.
A phone that can play games, has a large screen, can likely store lots of music, that would have been cool in 2006 now its like welcome to the club. It will probably use some special Sony only sim & memory cards.
Is there some epidemic of compulsive gaming going on? Honestly, there's nothing wrong with playing some games at home on a PC or console, then stopping that and doing something else for a while.
Go for a walk, hang out with friends, get something to eat, heck, even do homework or (gasp!) talk to your parents about life. It's okay, and possibly even healthy, to do non-twitch, non-adrenaline things while out and about each day.
Sony's a late entrant to a market for playing its own games on mobile. fpseCE has been available on WinMo forever, and has just been ported to android. Android already had psx4droid (even though it was slow, buggy, incompatible, the fps counter was bs, etc.) for quite some time. fpse plays all the original psx games (you know, the ones you already have, already paid for years ago, and don't feel like paying for again?), it's fast, compatible, looks great, and runs on ANY android phone. By releasing a specific phone to run Sony's "official" psx emulator, they're shooting themselves in the foot. Even the gamepad will soon have limited appeal, as there are already several projects out there to make a good universal bluetooth pad for smartphones (I myself am actually working on a slide-out gamepad to clip onto the back of my G2, and am currently just waiting to have spare cash to buy some parts).
So, Sony can go ahead and put out an entire phone for a niche market (that phone, by the way, has almost identical specs to the HTC Desire Z/G2 that has been out for many months, but with gamepad instead of keyboard), while independent devs continue to make universal apps that do the same thing on ANY reasonably powerful phone, with no DRM (not announced for the Sony system, but knowing Sony, you can bet your shiny metal ass it'll be in there). Guess which strategy will pay off?
What are the odds of unlocking this phone? High! What are the odds that the anal-retentive company backing it will sue till their blue? High! Will they listen to reason eg: the supreme court allows unblocking... NO! Will they still sue till they're blue? YES! Will I buy one? NO! Should anyone give them business? NO!
And you should always have your gadgets completely separated. [...] one for a flashlight, one for a fleshlight...
I lol'd.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
We aim to please here at Slashdot.
And no, not in THAT way.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Why don't they just call it X Play? Oh, wait...
Why would you even want one... in a couple of months it could probably stop being a phone..... possible no service.... no texting... how can you even be sure that it will still play games?
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
We aim to please here at Slashdot.
And no, not in THAT way.
Damn, I was gonna bin my fleshlight and just read slashdot....then you ruined it all :(
Most of the big, expensive mobile games use a "virtual joystick" which I hate. I tried to get used to them in the diablo clone Dungeon Hunter, but I just couldn't. It was missing the tactile feedback that I need. If this thing takes off to any degree, then I hope it sets a precedent.
I'm sorry, but I'm not clear in what aspect you expect this phone to be locked.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Employees at a certain Swedish office space are now allowed to take the "zeus" phone outside the building, I just installed nes/snes and Sega genesis emulators and filled the SD card with my old rom collection, they run perfectly at full speed and it's mapping the (Actually great) gamepad to the emu works perfectly. now playing mega man X3 with full snes controls. This is going to be a serious hit really... it can play gazillions of games.
We should have all learned of Sony's plan after the PS3. Sure, this phone runs android right now. They may even release it with android in the furture. But as soon as they figure out that people have android apps that Sony doesn't control, poof, and away it goes. At that point, we will be lucky if it still functions as a phone. Sony might try telling us that we only bought a piece of plastic, and they made no claim to it being either a phone or a gaming system, and to feel lucky that we get to keep the chunk of plastic we bought.
But don't think of hacking that now useless piece of plastic!
I don't spend much time at home playing games, because I like to hang out with friends, go for a walk, read a book, listen music, etc... it's actually when I'm on the train to work that I read a book or use my DS to spend that useless time.
Wait, why is the OP implying that you can't field replace the battery on the phone? Gamers would already be use to carrying around UMDs or small cartridges; couldn't you replace those with battery(ies) for gaming that can last for your marathon 20 hour gaming spree?
Oh wait, I guess the OP's use to not being able to replace the battery, perhaps because of a decision s/he made in picking what technology s/he owns.