Sony Ericsson has managed to cram just about every Sony brand name onto a phone over the past few years. We’ve seen Cybershot branded cameraphones and Walkman branded music phones, in Japan they’ve even had Bravia branded handsets. One brand has been missing from the portfolio though and it’s the one that most people desperately want to see … PlayStation. According to information obtained by Engadget that may become a reality sooner than we think.
Sony Ericsson are apparently working on a new gaming platform for Android that could redefine Android gaming. The work involves developing not only the platform itself, but an entire ecosystem to support it as well as a gaming device that is said to be in the late planning stages and receiving input from Google themselves.
In terms of the handset it’s been described as a mixture of Samsung’s Captivate and Sony’s PSP Go. What that means is that it’s a slider phone (in landscape mode), but instead of a keyboard sliding out it’s game controls the user will see i.e. a d-pad, a ‘long touch pad‘, the familiar PSP buttons, and shoulder buttons. The display is described as being large, somewhere between 3.7″ and 4.1″ and will be WVGA or better. The onboard camera is a 5 MP effort, which is pretty much the industry standard these days, but which could be beefed up further before the final design. In terms of the processor it looks like Sony Ericsson is going with the tried and tested option of a 1 GHz Snapdragon.
The aesthetics of the handset are also covered and help paint a picture of what it actually looks like in place of an actual picture of the device. It’s mostly black with silver highlighting, but the slide out game control area is white and silver. The device is tentatively being branded as an Xperia device, but it should carry the PlayStation branding too. Engadget quote those who have seen the device as describing it as “pretty damn sexy“.
Ok so that’s the hardware side of things, let’s now turn to the software. In sharp contrast to the X10 range of handsets this new device will be running Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) making it one of the most advanced Android handsets out in the market. There will be, as you may have already suspected, a custom UI skin from Sony Ericsson. Interestingly there will be a new section added to the Android Market to house the games for the new platform this handset will usher in. The games contained within this new section wil only be available for this new Sony Ericsson handset, at least to begin with. Other Android handsets should have access to them too if they meet the necessary hardware specifications and button configuration requirements.
The games themselves are said to be in the same bracket as PSX and PSP games in terms of graphics. In other words Android is getting full blown 3D gaming. The current range of games being touted for inclusion in this new Market section are predictably older titles, but there are some new ones in there too. The titles include God of War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and LittleBigPlanet (Ixalon’s favourite!). There are also apparently plans afoot for game titles that incorporate augmented reality.
The big question at this point is of course ‘when’? Well that is, as ever, a difficult question to answer. Engadget are citing October as a possible release window for this handset, but they do stress that this is unconfirmed and as we all know Sony Ericsson are not renowned for getting products to market on time.
[Engadget]
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