
The PlayStation Phone - lotusleaf1987
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/26/the-playstation-phone/
======
mjfern
Sony has trailed in digital music, online video, and casual/social gaming. I'm
glad that Sony is trying something different to get ahead of the curve as
portable gaming converges with smartphones. There are several reasons,
however, why I think this device may struggle in the market.

For instance, who is the target market? Kids and teen gamers who buy a PSP or
DS (I assume parents often pay) or young adults that currently buy an Android
phone or an iPhone?

If the target market is kids or teen gamers, will they be able to afford the
price of the device plus the monthly voice/data plan? For instance, while 33%
of teens aspire to own an iPhone, only 14% of teens actually own the device,
down 1% from the prior year (Fortune, 2010); perhaps this decline was due to
the recession or the emergence of Android phones.

For teens and young adults, will this device appeal to them as a replacement
for an iPhone or for a different Android phone? The iPhone and select Android
smart phones (e.g., Motorola Droid) have functional value, but also serve as a
fashion statement. For many, the phone you choose is an extension of your
identity (e.g., like your choice of car). How many teens and young adults will
identify with a Sony PS phone with built in PS controls?

Perhaps Sony can overcome the cost of ownership issue by partnering with a
discount cellular carrier, such as Virgin Mobile or Metro PCS. The second
issue about the appeal of iPhones and select Android phones is more of a
challenge. The device as pictured in the Engadget article looks interesting.
But how many teens and young adults will shy away from the built in PS
controls (and the bulk that this adds to the device)?

What are thoughts on how this device will perform in the smartphone market?

~~~
pedanticfreak
Perhaps there will be a WiFi-only version for the kids. Although I'm seeing
younger and younger children get not just mobile phones but data plans as
well.

I think the phone's success depends greatly on how well Sony can leverage its
game catalog. Unfortunately Sony has proven fairly incapable of exploiting it
on the PS3.

Nintendo is really missing the boat by not making a Nintendo DS Phone. A DS
with even the most basic "feature phone" capabilities would be incredibly
attractive to the 5 to 35 age group. You know, a dialer, a contact book, basic
SMS chat, calculator, calendar, and that Opera browser they already include in
the newer models. Throw in a few downloadable DSi apps and it would handily
beat the webOS and Windows Phone 7 devices overnight.

~~~
smiler
WiFi only version already exists - it's called a PSP.

I doubt Nintendo would do that due to their business model - which is to make
profit on every hardware unit sold. If they added all those features and had
to do deals with carriers etc, I doubt they could make a profit on their
hardware.

~~~
pedanticfreak
You make it sound like it would be prohibitively expensive to add a cellular
antenna to something. A DSi today costs $150 on which they presumably make a
profit.

Cell phones typically cost $200 and come with hundreds in carrier subsidies.
If you bought one straight up it would cost $400 to $600. Considering Nintendo
makes money on $150, they could increase the cost to $250 to add "all those
features" and the DS phone would still be free up front after carrier
subsidies.

I'm not sure what business you think cell phones makers are in. They only make
money by selling hardware so of course each unit needs to be profitable.

------
Groxx
> _For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick
> slot here, but there is support for microSD cards._

I... I think I'm going to cry... I never thought I'd live to see the day Sony
gave up on their #*@^ing memory sticks...

~~~
noilly
It boggles the mind how much economic rent and inefficiency is gotten through
pointlessly proprietary formats.

~~~
metageek
And Sony in particular has tried it many, many times, and usually failed.

Beta, 3.5" floppies, Minidisc, Blu-Ray, Digital8, MS...any others?

~~~
klous
Proprietary ATRAC music file format, as used with MiniDisc and their other
portable music players.

------
zarify
I find it quite encouraging to see this really. I think one of the flaws of
mobile gaming on things like the iPhone is that the touchscreen is a really
terrible way of interacting with many control schemes, both because of the
lack of tactile response and the fact that your fingers invariably get in the
way of the UI.

The fact that it's running Android is a big plus considering Sony's penchant
for running with their own tech (either hardware or software) and either noone
else adopting it or discouraging from others adopting it.

------
jsz0
Touch gaming is great for certain types of games but physical buttons offer a
totally different experience. I think a Playstation Phone could have been a
big hit if Sony moved quicker. They're just way too late. At best we're going
to see some Android games retrofitted with physical button controls and that's
just not going to be very exciting. How are they going to convince developers
to spend money targeting a non-standard Android platform that will reach so
few users? I think the best bet for Sony would be to make Playstation _the_
Android gaming brand. Work with Google to make stock Android the best gaming
platform out there, work with handset makers to set some standards for
input/GPUs/etc, license the PlayStation brand to Android handset makers,
launch a PlayStation Android Store. Let other companies figure out how to get
the hardware into people's hands. Does anyone doubt this device will be
massively outdated before it even ships?

~~~
ansible
I think a phone with dedicated gaming buttons / sticks can be successful.

I doubt that we'll see many Android games retrofitted to the PSPhone. What
would be the point for developers to do that? It is just limiting the market
for your game.

The big push will be developed-from-scratch, PSP and PS2-ported games on the
PSPhone. If SE does the emulators and such correctly, the phone will launch
with a massive library.

The PSPGo and most recent Nintendo DS series systems were massively outdated
when they shipped too. And it didn't stop them from being successful. If you
look at the specs for those systems (processor, memory) it is laughable. The
PSPhone has a 1GHz processor, 0.5GB RAM and decent 3D rendering performance...
so it is going to last a long time, at least 5 years.

The other Android phone makers won't want to have dedicated hardware buttons
for gaming... so they won't cooperate with SE, and frankly, SE doesn't want
them either. They'd rather be the primary phone gaming platform all by
themselves, or failing that, carve out a dedicated chunk of the market.

------
sandipc
Android emulator development should pick up real fast after this is
released...

~~~
fletchowns
Funny how we make all this progress and pack a ridiculous amount of processing
power in a handheld device, only to then put in a bunch of extra effort just
so we can play Super Mario World on yet another device.

~~~
charlief
Maybe it is the game being good, maybe it is just nostalgia,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_video_game...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_video_game_franchises)

With 240 million sales, there's probably a little Mario in each of us. New
releases and/or perpetual emulation of Mario games is the one constant we can
expect to find in future generations of devices with new and old generations
of people alike grabbing coins and jumping on Koopa shells.

------
toast76
From my experience with the PSP they can't get mobile gaming right.

From my experience with the X10 they can't get Android phones right.

I dread to think what the two together will be like.

~~~
charlief
I agree with you on the X10, but I feel the PSP does some things very well for
hardcore gaming. Sure it isn't as populist as the various phone and DS games
out there, but I still find the God of War series on the PSP to be one of the
most vivid mobile gaming experiences around.

------
lukestevens
Slapping a Playstation controller on an Android phone is one of those weird
last gen/this gen mishmashes that highlights Sony's struggle to cling to
relevancy, imo.

Surely the iOS phenomenon (and Android & WP7) -- particularly the iPod touch
-- shows that for handheld gaming a chunky controller isn't necessary.

As Gruber often points out, where _is_ the iPod touch competitor? This is
likely to be too expensive to compete with the iPod touch, and too
chunky/niche to compete with iPhones and other smartphones as a platform in
its own right. And that's what Sony needs -- an iOS-like platform, not this
strange bit of hardware.

It's pretty sad that for a company that has built some of the most popular
consoles of all time, all they can come up with in 2010 is the mutant child of
their controller and a generic smartphone.

~~~
CrazedGeek
A controller might not be necessary, but for anyone that plays slightly more
involved games than iOS has, it's a godsend. Playing a platformer on an iPod
touch is rather annoying.

~~~
eru
I can imagine an interesting control scheme employing the tilt detection and
accelerometers. Do they incorporate those?

~~~
swift
Some titles have. It doesn't work out as well as you might hope; those inputs
aren't exactly precise, and tilting the screen can be a bit disorienting. The
result is that level layouts have to be much simpler to maintain the same
degree of challenge.

~~~
eru
Thanks. I have played the new Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. They make use of
shaking and tilting the controller, but very sparingly and buttons are the
main means of control.

(It's a good game. I was expecting it would follow the trend of making games
ever more casual. I was wrong. Mario Bros. Wii is hard.)

------
mattezell
Interesting arena for the Android to get to venture into. Makes sense,
really... Just another means to get the OS out there... With Android phones
and tablet/netbooks appearing everywhere, it is neat to see the Android
platform showing up in yet another sector of the electronics market - gaming
platforms. Nothing new for Java, granted, but still a hell of a feat in such a
"short time" operating under the Android/Google brand. Seems like the market
for Android devs is growing by leaps and bounds... Before long there will be a
Android powered portable bluetooth/HDMI/netbookish portable-game-consoles
appearing in the market - running Android, of course...

------
superk
So... can you play PlayStation games on it?

------
Poiesis
I am puzzled as to why the choice of Android was made (assuming it's true). A
company with Sony's background would seem to have the requisite OS experience,
and one would they would have learned from the recent lessons of why control
over your OS is a good thing.

~~~
pedanticfreak
1) Sony uses open source, they do like it. PS2 and PS3 could run Linux. 2)
Sony-Ericsson already makes the Xperia line of Android phones. The Playstation
phone is the same thing, with buttons. 3) Sony has another strategic
partnership with Google Android in its new line of Google TV enabled
televisions and Blu-ray players.

~~~
pornel
I don't agree with the first point. You can run Linux on almost anything. Sony
recently dropped and deliberately blocked Linux support on PS3.

~~~
pedanticfreak
Sony may not meet your standards for always being in the spirit of open
source. But they do use a lot of open source and have shown a heck of a lot
more support for open source and open standards than other device companies.

Besides. Compared to the rest of the Android OS field, Sony fits right in.
Take what you can get for free and don't give back any more than necessary.

------
dave1967
HMMM.. [http://recombu.com/news/is-the-playstation-phone-
real_M12610...](http://recombu.com/news/is-the-playstation-phone-
real_M12610.html) is the phone real or not, Barry Oneill feels it isn't

------
iuguy
Oh god, the horror. Somehow they've managed to make something that looks worse
and less intuitive than a PSP Go, a handheld console that managed to take
everything right about the PSP and completely screw it up.

------
83457
Very interesting approach to analog sticks. Looks like two circular touch pads
with a button in the middle. One of the problems with touch screens is that
you can't feel the center of virtual control sticks.

~~~
galisevych
problem with onscreen keys is not only "you can not feel" issue, but simply
with blocking part of the screen with your finger. For most of application it
is not critical, but for gaming it is.

------
djb_hackernews
Why hasn't anyone built a 3rd party controller that talks via bluetooth to any
android/iOS device? Make a few games and license the API and phone specific
cradle-to-controller grips.

millions. boom.

------
scrrr
Apparently the images are fake: <http://www.nowgamer.com/news/4488/sony-psp-
phone-is-fake>

~~~
Lewisham
All that says is that the phone is a prototype. "A large amount of dirt under
the screen" and an incomplete UI does not mean they are fake.

------
angrycoder
side talkin all over again.

------
happybuy
Too little, too late.

------
pedanticfreak
Hopefully the Playstation team is able to finally give a good skin to Android.

I would say I have faith in Sony making buckets of money selling emulated
Playstation games, but the PS3 Store has been a disaster. They had every
opportunity to have an App Store before there was an App Store, but they blew
it. And still continue to blow it.

~~~
acgourley
The PS3 has demonstrated that Sony knows hardware, but it does not know
software.

The xbox has demonstrated the opposite.

------
bch
That is hot... now I have to resolve the hotness versus my disgust with Sony.

------
pontifier
It's a trap! They will advertise that you can use it as a phone and a gaming
device... but then they will claim that people might badmouth sony or
something using the phone feature, and they will make you choose... phone or
psp.

