PSPphone (XperiaPlay) preview on Engadget

Engadget got their hands on Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play-- a.k.a. the Playstation Phone-- check out their preview with video here.


It's ridiculous how much this device has been leaked all while Sony continues to deny, deny, deny.... at this point they almost have nothing left to reveal. Ok, that's hyperbole; there's still plenty to reveal, I'm sure.

What gets me is all the people who are excited for this thing. I don't understand what they think a Playstation branded phone will get them?

Let's look at the history: Sony Computer Entertainment releases a download-only PSP, the PSPgo. They promise that a big part of the UMD library will migrate to the Playstation Store. It doesn't.

Flash forward to the present: Playstation phone is revealed. We have no idea what games will be available, but it's running Android so we all assume that there will be a special Android Playstation section. Actually, if you watch the vid at the Engadget article it looks like Pocketstation will be the store interface that supplies the games for this device.

My question is this: why would anyone in their right mind think that many PSP games will be available on Xperia Play when they aren't even available on the friggin' PSPgo????? Seriously, what is wrong with these people that they can't even see that????

The PSPgo fragmented the PSP library-- it only allows PSPgo owners to play a small portion of that library. A new PSP Phone will fragment that even further: an even *smaller* portion of games may be playable on it. I SERIOUSLY DOUBT that any regular PSP games would be available (officially-- maybe someone will hack it with emulators)... maybe PSP Minis will be compatible but I kinda doubt that too.

So PSP phone owners will have to hope that devs come up with new games to fill up the "Pocketstation Store"... games that can only be playable on a PSP phone... now, WHY would a developer want to do that when they could work on games that could be playable on most Android devices? Why would they want to limit their market? The same reason they develop games only playable on PSPgo-- THEY DON'T.

Granted, now that I'm using a touchscreen phone device... while the capacitive touchscreen is really nice... virtual onscreen D-pad & buttons are a poor substitute for actual physical ones. Having a D-pad & face buttons on the Xperia Play would probably make a lot of currently available Android games more fun, like Zenonia. I can see why people might be excited about that. But the slider "dual analogue sticks"... while that's an intriguing idea, what are those gonna be used for? Unless some current Android games can be programmed to use those, as cool as they might be, we have to hope that the Pocketstation will supply games that will use them, and good games at that? That's a LOT to hope for.



later
don