Review: Xperia Play not the phone gamers hoped for (AP)

WASHINGTON – Sony makes PlayStation game consoles and, through a joint venture, cellphones. Gamers have been asking for years why it hasn't combined the two products. Well, it finally has, with Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play.

Sadly, though, this is not the "PlayStation phone" gamers have been hoping for. It is a solid machine that will feel immediately comfortable to PSP users, but it doesn't yet have anywhere near the breadth and depth of games you'd expect from something with "Play" in its name.

At launch, only one classic PlayStation game is available: the delightful but dated "Crash Bandicoot." This is disappointing, particularly since it's the first time Sony has allowed its PlayStation games to run on hardware not directly made by Sony. (Sony Ericsson is a joint venture with Sweden's LM Ericsson AB, and substantially independent from either parent company.)

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.

On the left are directional controls (up, down, left, right). On the right are the now familiar PlayStation buttons (triangle, square, circle, X). In the middle are two pressure-sensitive plates meant to duplicate the two joysticks on the PlayStation DualShock controller. Left and right triggers — which land where your index fingers should be — round out the game controls. All those buttons make the Xperia Play, at two-thirds of an inch, a little thicker than most smartphones.

The game menu appears whenever you open the device. Besides "Crash Bandicoot," it's loaded with a variety of games that have been hits on other cellphone networks: Electronic Arts' "The Sims 3" and "Madden NFL 11," Gameloft's "Asphalt 6: Adrenaline" and "Star Battalion," and Digital Legends' "Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior."

More games can be downloaded through Verizon's VCast store. The selection is passable, ranging from family favorites like "Uno" to the role-playing epic "Zenonia," but there's nothing exclusive to the Xperia Play. The device runs on Verizon's 3G network, and games can also be downloaded through Wi-Fi. (Gameloft's "Let's Golf 2" took about 5 minutes to download via Wi-Fi and install.)

While most of these games take advantage of the PlayStation-style controls, they make you aware of the phone's biggest drawback, compared with a PSP: The two plates that are supposed to mimic joysticks provide no tactile feedback, so it's hard to tell if you're applying enough pressure until you've slammed your racecar into a wall. In racing or flying simulators you can use the directional buttons instead, but games that require the virtual joysticks — like Glu Games' dual-stick shooter "Gun Bros." — are nearly unplayable.

The phone runs the latest version of Google Inc.'s Android operating system, so you can download plenty more games from the Android Market. These games don't use the PSP-like controls, though — they're the same touchscreen games you can play on most Android phones. And the Android Market is so clogged with dreadful software that it's difficult to find the few gems worth downloading.

While the 4-inch screen isn't as vivid as the PSP's, it is bright and sharp enough that your eyes don't get tired during prolonged gaming sessions. The battery gave me about five hours of playtime; Sony Ericsson says it can deliver up to seven hours and 40 minutes of talk time. The two front and back-facing cameras shoot adequate still pictures and video.

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 who are in the market for a smartphone should consider it, but it won't replace your PSP.

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Online:

http://www.sonyericsson.com/play/

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Lou Kesten can be reached at http://twitter.com/lkesten

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Verizon woos Android lovers with Xperia Play, launches three other new phones (Appolicious)

Verizon’s ramping up its smartphone roster with a new lineup of devices, all featuring entertainment perks, speed boosts and new features. The four new devices include the Xperia Play, LG Revolution, HTC Trophy and Motorola Droid X2.

The Xperia Play is the darling of the bunch, manufactured by Sony Ericsson, and donning the PlayStation mark. It’s a gaming phone, connected to the PlayStation Network, and designed to handle high-end games, making it a hefty gaming device that happens to have phone capabilities. With a 4-inch 480x854 display, 1GHz CUP and an 8GB memory card, the long-awaited Xperia Play will cost you $199 if you give Verizon two years of your life.

LG’s hoping to make a splash in the device arena with the Revolution, touting LTE capabilities as one of its selling features. This makes the Revolution a speedy phone, with faster data transfer on the go. It’s slightly bigger than the Xperia Play, with a 4.3-inch screen, a single-core 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 5-megapixel back camera (and 1.3-megapixel front camera), and 16GB of storage. You’ll pay a premium for the speed, however, with the Revolution’s price tag of approximately $250 with a two-year contract.

The HTC Trophy, on the other hand, is the device maker’s latest Windows phone, boasting WP7 OS. It’s the cheapest in this freshly launched group, costing about $150 with a two-year contract. It’s also on the smaller side, with a 3.8-inch display, a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 5-megapixel back camera and 16GB of storage memory.

Finally, there’s the Droid X2, which is roaring with power. It’s got the dual-core 1GHz CPU, with an 8-megapixel back camera and a 4.3 inch, 960x540 display. There’s no LTE on this phone, however, slightly dropping the price down to about $199 with a two-year contract. For all its beauty and brawn, the X2 is really missing out with no support for Verizon’s 4G capabilities, leaving it to city outskirts, while making way for faster phones.

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Android version of Minecraft to be a timed exclusive for Xperia Play (Digital Trends)

Sony‘s fabled PlayStation Phone, the Xperia Play, will be in the retail wilds for anyone to fiddle with by the end of this week. It’s not exactly the PSP-turned-phone that some had hoped for, but it’s a powerful little mobile device with a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and a top-shelf Adreno 205 GPU. It ships with an assortment of games already installed (including Tetris!) and it’s the first phone to support the PlayStation Suite. It’s a gaming device-as-phone, even if the PSP can still run circles around it in the hardware department. It’s also going to be the first phone that you can officially play Mojang’s popular PC game Minecraft on.

The developer tipped Gamasutra with the news, revealing that Minecraft will be available as a timed exclusive on the Play. There’s no words on how long the window will remain open for or when it will open to begin with, but the game will come to other Android platforms, as well as iOS, at some point after the Play release. Mojang also confirmed that the initial release is designed to take advantage of the Sony phone’s game controls, which are modeled after the company’s DUALSHOCK controller.

Obviously more device-specific customization will be required once the exclusivity ends since the Play’s gamepad-like interface is unique to the device. Most other smartphones and mobile platforms rely exclusively on touch-based input. As Mojang told Gamasutra, “When playing on smartphones you will have a different screen size compared to PC, different hardware, different attention spans and thus the game needs to be customised to fit the mobile specifications.” A Sony Ericsson event is planned for E3, so more details will presumably emerge then.

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