Sony makes PlayStation game consoles and, through a joint venture, cellphones. Gamers have been asking for years why it hasn’t combined the two. Well, it has, with Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play.
The Xperia Play is available now from Verizon Wireless, and costs $200 with a two-year contract. As on many smartphones, a panel slides it out from under the screen. But it doesn’t contain the usual keyboard. Instead, there’s a full set of arcade controls that look like what might happen if you flattened a PlayStation controller to (almost) two dimensions.
The game menu appears when you open the device. There’s “Crash Bandicoot” and a variety of games that have been hits on other cellphone networks.
Most of these games take advantage of the PlayStation-style controls, but the two plates that are supposed to mimic joysticks provide no tactile feedback.
In short, the Xperia Play delivers just about everything you’d expect in a top-of-the-line smartphone. What it doesn’t deliver — yet — is the quality of gaming you get from a dedicated device. PlayStation fans should consider it, but it won’t replace a PSP.
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