Microsofts Hunert Smoke
Banned
The Xperia Play was a great idea. The PSP was popping at the time of its release and it had a very similar form factor to the PSPGO. but for some reason Sony never really tried to push it. I'm not even kidding, they basically did nothing with it. It launched with barely any buzz and had a store with only 6 or so games. They added iirc 2 more games and throughout the life of the platform the list was never updated.
They did to a minimal extent, re-release it with Crash Bandicoot built-in later, but with the same games list. People figured out how to hack Crash Bandicoot to get access to the emulator so you could play PSX roms on it. Sony release another model that had 4G support but basically didn't even advertise it.
It's so strange because it was such a great idea to fuse traditional handhelds and mobile but they just let it fail for no reason that makes any sense. Not to mention the slide-out controller worked for android games as well and playstore emulators.
I think that Sony should explore the Xperia play again, as someone mentioned, it would be a much more logical and profitable idea then to try and make another PSP/Vita device.
Here is what it could have:
1. No expensive nonsense design, just get a regular well built slab with a 4k screen and not crazy expensive background features.
2. Slide-out gamepad with decent build.
3. Current generation gaming chip-set.
4. Camera needs to be only good not mind-blowing as it is focusing on games.
5. Integrate some customization to google play games for Xperia to enable streaming, which will prevent Sony making their own streaming features, costing less money.
that right there would be only around a $400 phone ($350 if the gimp on the speakers) with maybe a free or $99 contract price, and of course a $0 monthly device payment price and likely only around $20 a month after.
So it would be affordable to those that want to buy outright, while also being really chip for those that won't to pay in increments.
They can integrate it with PSN so PSN games can be played on it, an have some devs make some Xperia Play 2 only games. So you have the device having it's own library, the PSN library, and the Android library all in ONE device for an affordable price with barely any work or significant expense from Sony.
This day and age phones and batteries are thin enough that a slide-out controller won't make the phone the size of a brick like with the original PSP go.
What do you think?