Last night, in a rather nice restaurant, Sony Ericsson lifted the UK lid on a few of its latest phones. On show were the Xperia Neo, Pro, Arc and of course the Play
What with us being a games review site, I thought it would make sense to spend some time looking at and playing with the much hyped Xperia Play – otherwise known as the Playstation phone. This is hailed as the first Playstation Certified phone, so there were high hopes for its gaming pedigree from the moment it is mentioned.
Let’s start at the beginning, how it looks and feels. There is no denying that it is a tasty looking phone. The 4 inch touch screen is bright with great contrast. In the hand it is a little heavier than an iPhone 4 but it feels solid and well built. Powered by Android 2.3, the interface is – as you would expect – responsive and easy to get on with. On the back is a 5 megapixel camera and a flash, more than adequate for most people. Inside it is running a 1ghz Snapdragon CPU and an embedded Adreno GPU to handle the 3D. Quite a lot of grunt then!
So far, so Android phone. Where is the Playstation bit. Patience people!
Slide the screen up and you will reveal a controller in the style of a Playstation joy pad. You have the D-Pad, the familiar Playstation face buttons and two touch sensitive thumb pads. In the top edge of the controller, under the screen, there are two shoulder buttons. Everything you need to play Playstation style games really!
This is where things start to fall over a little though. I won’t go too much into software, as this is a pre-release unit we were playing with. However I will say that it is very disappointing sliding out the controller, to have nothing happen on screen. I would love to see some kind of Playstation-esque menu screen popup in landscape. Sadly you have to choose your game in portrait mode, then turn the screen round to play. Not very intuitive.
The face buttons all work nicely and are very responsive. The analogue style thumb pads are also very well thought out and work the way you would hope. It gets a little shaky when it comes to the shoulder buttons. They seem to be positioned so that you have to constantly change your grip to use them. Another problem is the way the unit is balanced. The screen is quite heavy compared to the controls, so it constantly wants to fall forward. Particularly evident when you have to let go with one hand to use the onscreen touch controls in some parts of games.
The games themselves look pretty good. A few of us compared Bruce Lee on the iPhone to the preinstalled version on the Play and we all agreed that it did look better on the Play. The edges were less jagged and the colours and contrast all seemed better. In terms of how it played, I will admit that having a fixed control pad – rather than sliding my thumbs around the screen – was very nice indeed. Some of the games that are going to be released at the launch of the Play (April the 1st amazingly!) look promising. Asphalt 6 certainly has the oooo factor – even if it does suffer a little slow down at the moment. FIFA 10 looked good, although not my thing. There are 50 planned titles for launch day – not bad.
It is worth noting some of the companies that are signed up to produce games for t as well. If nothing else, it is a good who’s who of mobile gaming!
- Sony Computer Entertainment
- Digital Chocolate
- Digital Legends
- Electronic Arts
- Fishlabs
- Gamehouse
- Gameloft
- Glu Mobile
- Handy Games
- Namco Bandai Networks
- Polarbit
- PopCap
- Trendy Entertainment
- Unity Technologies
Connectivity is one of the big point that was being sold to us whilst there. You will be able to get online and play against friends. However, and for me this is a big downer, there is currently no connection to PSN. To me that makes no sense at all.
And that was the overall feeling I had. It makes no sense at all. As much as I really want this to be the next big thing, I just can’t understand why it has been launched. If it had come out a couple of years ago – when Playstation phones were first being talked about – then maybe. The problem is, it comes out after the 3DS and before the NGP.
Casual gamers will be catered for by the 3DS and the hardcore gamers will wait out for the NGP. The people who just want a phone you can play games on will either already have an iPhone or they will have another Android phone (and if not they need to look a the rather stunning Xperia Arc that was being displayed.)
I have been wrong big style before – hell I predicted the Wii would flop. But, I can’t help but feel history is with me here. Who remembers all of these promises with the NGage? Admittedly, this has the backing of Sony, so it has got gaming pedigree and it is a nice little unit. I just don’t understand where in the market it fits.
Let’s hope that I am once again well and truly of the mark, but for me the Play needs to offer a whole lot more than a few mobile games I can get for Android or iPhone already and a load of console conversions or PS One games. With luck this will be the launch pad for a great games platform, that will bring true gaming to the mobile phone. Until then, I am just left with the question – Why?