For several months there have been rumors of Sony bringing their PlayStation franchise to the mobile PDAPhone / Smartphone space. Sony has not set any great records with its latest PDAPhone devices, so this is thought to be a way for them to shake things up and leverage their gaming expertise to become a significant player. Apple has taken the early lead for mobile gaming by building an arsenal of great gaming apps in spite of not having the familiar gaming controls. This has been a challenge for some game developers, but many have adapted and like any change in an industry, new developers have used the occasion to grow quickly. Microsoft is also planning to exploit mobile gaming by integrating Xbox live into its Windows Phone 7 devices. The rumors of the Xperia Play mobile device became much more legitimate yesterday when Engadget broke open the subject with an extensive hands on review and video of the device. Unfortunately, there were no games on the device they got their hands on. We've included the Engadget video, as well as a Japanese video showing an actual game on the device, blow in the article. The device looks very much like you'd expect. If you took an Android slider phone to start, and then replaced the QWERTY keypad in the slide with a set of PlayStation controls, you pretty much have the Xperia Play. What would have been cool is if they had figured out a way to also provide the QWERTY keyboard in there somehow. There is a lot of space in the middle of the keyboard that doesn't seem to have a purpose, but details on the controls will emerge over time. From a hardware standpoint, the device has a nice display that Sony claims to be using their Bravia technology with, in addition to an image sensor benefiting from Sony's digital camera leadership. But since there is no official announcement on the device today (as had been rumored), any of the specific hardware could change before the device becomes reality.
Instead of the Xperia Play announcement today that was expected, Sony announced their NGP (Next Generation Portable) pictured below. I will say that this looks a LOT more polished than the Xperia Play prototype thats the subject of this story. Hopefully the final product will borrow even more from the NGP. But the surprise in the announcement was that Sony is rolling out PlayStation Suite, a new platform for Android device gaming.
Rather than keep all the mobile Playstation gaming to its Xperia line, Sony appears to be opening it up for the Android masses. Its new PlayStation Suite will provide a game app store that they control, a list of PSOne classic games, and a game development environment for coders to create their own titles. Developers will be able to have their title licensed and certified under the PlayStation Certified program, and then distributed through the PlayStation store. Sony indicated that this storefront would sit on the Android device meaning it would be yet another Android app store alongside Android Market. Sony says the program will be available sometime in 2011 which means that they are probably targeting the 2011 Christmas season which is the biggest sales period for games. They would also certainly be busy working with key game developers now to get key titles on board for launch. Microsoft should also have solidified their Windows Phone 7 Xbox Live story by then so next Christmas I'm predicting will be the year of mobile device gaming like we've never seen before.
Engadget Hands On Xperia Play Video
Xperia Play Gaming Video
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