At the Game Developers Conference I was finally able to get a look at the Xperia Play and do some gaming. The good news is the hardware is solid, the sliding mechanism is nice and smooth, and all the buttons work just like you'd expect. The question that remains is whether or not customers are going to want to buy new hardware just to play classic PlayStation titles.
First, the phone itself. The d-pad and buttons sit close to the base, so getting used to pushing buttons that are nearly flush with the hardware was a little disconcerting, but I was able to get over it. I played Asphalt 6 with the dual touchpad-style analog controls and it felt fine, and to my surprise I could steer by tapping the outside of each circle, just like a standard d-pad. It's not a zero-point device like we're used to on touch-based gaming devices—and that's fine for phone games and classic titles.
The problem is that there will be few games released on the Android marketplace that will take advantage of all those nice, physical buttons. When even my mother is calling me about Tiny Wings, we have to deal with the reality of the changing marketplace. People who game on their phone want inexpensive titles that are easy to pick up and play for a few moments, and PlayStation One games are larger experiences that don't lend themselves well to shorter sessions. I played Crash Bandicoot, which is a game that hasn't aged well. The Bruce Lee fighting game was dire. I didn't see anything preloaded on the phone that had me excited, and there wasn't anything on display that made me want to take one home.
The hardware is everything we wanted it to be, but until there's a game that really takes advantage of what it can do—and is hopefully a new title that isn't being remaindered in disc form at the local GameStop—it's going to be a hard sell.
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