The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play: Where Do You Want To Take Your Gaming Today?
by Brian Dipert on August 8, 2011 1:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Sony
- Android
- Xperia Play
- Mobile
A few months back, I attended Qualcomm's Uplinq conference in San Diego, where among other things I met AnandTech's Brian Klug for the first time. Sony Ericsson Mobile Communication's Rikko Sakaguchi, the company's Executive Vice President and "Chief Creation Officer", delivered one of the conference keynotes. Within his pitch, Sakaguchi emphasized that his company's aspiration was to not be another 'me-too' smartphone manufacturer but to instead deliver unique products with tangible value to target customers.
I strongly resonate with that corporate goal, with the qualifier that I've also heard it plenty of times before from other companies, and that repeated past-history case studies suggest that it's 'easy to say, but hard to do'. And I also assume (and hope) that Sony Ericsson did at least a modicum of market research before rolling out the Xperia Play. But some amount of doubt admittedly begins to creep into my consciousness when I think back to Sakaguchi showcasing the Xperia Play as a 'no compromises' platform in his pitch...and compare his claim against my hands-on findings during this evaluation.
As such, after spending a week-plus with the Xperia Play, I'm admittedly skeptical of its chances. Granted, standalone handheld game consoles aren't doing a stellar job of holding off the gaming-on-mobile phone onslaught. The very day I finished the first draft of this writeup, for example, Nintendo slashed the U.S. price of the latest-generation 3DS from $250 to $170, in conjunction with announcing a quarterly operating loss. And Sony was atypically aggressive with the pricing on the upcoming PlayStation Vita ($249 for the Wi-Fi-only model, $299 for a 3G cellular data-inclusive variant), which the company unveiled at the early-June E3 Conference.
But I'm not sure that a gaming-tailored cellphone is the solution. Hard-core gamers will still buy and tote around a dedicated gaming console (or few), in addition to a generic cell phone. Casual gamers will stick with a mainstream cellular handheld, unwilling to accept the incremental price, weight and thickness of the Xperia Play (especially when, for the increased heft of a 'slider' design, they only get game controls on the lower layer, versus a more versatile-function physical keyboard). Is there a sufficient-sized middle ground between those two user extremes to cultivate a fiscally profitable customer base for Sony Ericsson? Maybe, but early market-embrace indications suggest otherwise.
I'm admittedly not a hard-core gamer. I am, on the other hand, beyond the other end of the spectrum; someone who occasional indulges in nothing more challenging than a bit of Angry Birds while waiting in line at the grocery store or gas pump. I own both iOS- and Android-based handsets, along with an iPod touch, a first-generation iPad and several Android tablets, all loaded up with an assortment of game titles...not to mention two jailbroken Sony Playstation Portables, both a Nintendo DS and a 3DS, and an assortment of living room gaming consoles. I'm arguably smack-dab in the middle of the Xperia Play target demographic.
So would I buy the 'PlayStation Phone'? Honestly, probably not. Generic titles for Android and iOS are less expensive than their Xperia Play-optimized counterparts, not to mention more numerous; the developers are making less money per sale but in exchange have access to a much larger potential sales audience. And many of the broad-base Android and iOS titles are at least as engaging as their Xperia Play counterparts, some of which I've already played on other Sony hardware and therefore wouldn't buy again, if not more. Heck, I've even tried a few homebrew PSP games that are the equal of their Xperia Play counterparts in overall entertainment value. The Xperia Play delivers a decent gaming experience, but it makes too many hardware tradeoffs (weight, thickness, etc) and its content is too expensive and limited in variety to justify its presence in my particular gaming stable.
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SilthDraeth - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I wonder why they chose a Dpad for directional control vs a flat analog slider pad reminiscent of the Nintendo 3ds?I would have thought the analog slider pad would have better mimicked the capacitive touch circle control. In fact I probably would play some more N.O.V.A 2 if my Samsung epic had a analog slider pad.
I wonder, if maybe they didn't do it, because at the time the phone was designed and released, the 3DS hadn't came out, and no one had thought of it yet...
LordOfTheBoired - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Interesting theory, but there's a problem with it... the PSP had a flat analog slider long before the 3DS did.It's also an input that is largely reviled by the fans, and not without justification.
Though the fans think the problem is that it isn't a "real stick"(actually, two of them) rising high above the face of the device like a home gamepad(specifically, like the DualShock series of gamepads), and to hell with pocketability. See also: the upcoming PS Vita.
Personally, I think it was just a poorly-considered implementation of a good device.
The fault as I see it is that it's topped with a convex thumb-piece and the centering springs are fairly high-tension. Though the awkward location doesn't help matters either(I'm pretty sure the slider was shoehorned in late in the system's development and it was intended to be digital-only).
I'm rather disappointed to know the capacitive disks don't work, as I thought they were a good idea. Especially as it avoided the preference for cardinal directions in dual-spring potentiometer designs(a very strong preference in the case of the PSP's high-tension slider).
Guspaz - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Good idea, terrible implementation. While I'm not a PSP owner,and have only played with them a bit, my experience was that the problems were:1) Horribly positioned. My hand cramped up using the analog nub on the PSP while simultaneously holding the PSP with that hand
2) Concave form factor made it harder to grip
3) Rough texture was uncomfortable
4) Spring put up too much resistance
5) Too small and not enough range of motion
The 3DS circle pad attempts to address all of these complaints, and while it isn't quite perfect, it's a good enough implementation that it can compete with "real" analog sticks rather nicely. Of course, by giving it good positioning, it makes the 3DS' d-pad uncomfortable to use, but you can't have it both ways. Anyhow, a circle-pad would certainly fit on something like the xperia play. In fact, I wish that the circle-pad was on more devices, but unfortunately Nintendo's patents will prevent that. Hopefully Sony can come up with their own similar slider pad that, if not identical to the circle pad, at least makes the same corrections.
MacTheSpoon - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
This first gen phone is underwhelming, but I hope they stick with the concept and iron out the problems. The underlying concept of a smartphone with physical game controls seems spot-on. I'd love to play console-type games on my phone using physical controls instead of multitouch.ImSpartacus - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
The first gen phone is underwhelming and ever single phone after that will follow similarly.Why? The Vita. I can't understand why Sony thought it was a good idea to split the Vita and Xperia Play. If you want to compete with iOS gaming, you can't do it with two distinct devices. Sony needs a unified gaming device. They are welcome to sell a wifi version (a la iPod Touch), but their flagship needs to be a phone.
seamonkey79 - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
^ ThisExodite - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Because Sony isn't the same company as Sony Ericsson?It's not even a subsidiary, indeed SE is made up from far more of the old Ericsson phone division than it is Sony.
This isn't in any way, shape of form a 'Sony' phone - Sony doesn't do phones.
ImSpartacus - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Then Sony should do phones.Zoomer - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Not outside Japan, anyway.Guspaz - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
Sony Ericsson is 50% owned by Sony and 50% owned by Ericsson. They make Walkman-branded phones, Cyber-shot branded phones, BRAVIA-branded phones... Sony and Ericsson could clearly have come to an agreement if Sony had wanted to do this all in one device.After all, the XPeria Play and Vita are similar architecturally. They both use ARM SoCs (a departure for Sony in a game console), although the XPeria Play is using a Qualcomm Snapdragon with an Adreno GPU while the Vita is using a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 with a PowerVR SGX534MP4.
In actual fact, the hardware in the Vita is identical to the iPad 2 except doubled (same CPU/GPU, just double the cores each).