Xperia Play: Personal thoughts from an old PS gamer

I tried the demo unit from Singtel shop, and here is my impression of Xperia Play.

  • I expected the PlayStation game menu to pop up when I slide the phone but it did not happen (a quick google confirms someone messed up the settings since it is a display unit).
  • Two similar apps (PlayStation Pocket and Xperia Play, one for official games and another for third party games, respectively) for accessing games, I think this is a bad design.
  • The graphics of Crash Bandicoot is bad, I know it is an old PS game, but this is pre-installed in Xperia Play, which definitely will give an bad impression, considering iPhone has demonstrated games with high-quality graphics. More marketing on the games available now for Xperia Play will be needed to convince gamers to not hold on for NGP.
  • The buttons feel like, well, ordinary buttons.
  • I just tried the analogue touch pad on FIFA 11. It is responsive, the middle of each touch pad has a slight protrusion to let you gauge your finger position without looking, but the feeling could not match pushing a classic PS analogue joystick. One more thing to note: the graphics is bad.
  • Someone pointed out that Xperia Play will impress gamers to include the classic PS game titles. I definitely agree with the idea, as I will be thrilled if I could play Super Robot Wars Alpha on my Android phone. However, there is already a quite successful PS emulator out there, and it very much depends on the willingness and speed of Sony Ericsson to add the game titles.

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