July 4th, 2011 
Droid 
In early 2000s Sony Ericsson created new directions in the mobile phone world. For example, they saw huge potential in built-in phone cameras, started to develop them, and became market leaders and real trendsetters. Another interesting direction – their music phones under the Walkman brand. Let me remind you that the camera phones were produced under the CyberShot brand, which also belongs to Sony – the parent company of Sony Ericsson.
Mobile phone sales grew incredibly fast. Sony Ericsson’s competitors were copying solutions, looking for reasons for the success of its products, but were years behind in terms of technology. This was the peak of Sony Ericsson’s success. In 2004 the company announced its first game phone project. And this model was eventually released – the well-known Sony Ericsson S500. This model hit the market in 2005.
Dedicated gaming keys were the main distinguishing factor of that model, but considering the use of Sony Ericsson’s own A100 platform, which was limited to Java, no one expected great success for this phone. It would be wrong to claim that this was the company’s first attempt to test mobile gaming market. In 2003 company released gaming manipulator Gameboard EGB-10 specifically for the Z600, which featured familiar Playstation-like controls. However, due to the high price and lack of quality games, this combination never reached popularity.
Even after the first few unsuccessful attempts, Sony Ericsson continued to work on a gaming phone, which would utilise the Playstation brand. They were working to create not a single unit, but a variety of gaming devices, designed for different audiences. Quality games would be the key feature of these devices, therefore, company saw only one possibility for development – integration with Sony’s Playstation platform. Sony Ericsson offered a very simple interaction model – games get additional functionality, which allows them to be played both on the phone (with limited features and poorer graphics) and on the console. People using both types of devices would receive additional bonuses. Unfortunately, this idea ran into implementation problems, and, in addition, game studios showed no particular interest. Sony itself were not willing to give their games and their brand to Sony Ericsson. This was a classic situation where Sony counted on consoles, and felt that game phones could kill the market for them. It was a conscious decision.
The reason that forced the company to revive research of game projects is rather prosaic. Profitability has become the key business indicator for Sony Ericsson and it is now obvious that the market is widely enjoying various games on their phones, which are producing healthy margins for their producers. Sony Ericsson decided to use their excellent capabilities of producing gaming devices again. As such, a new gaming smartphone project was started in 2010. Moreover, Sony Ericsson’s deplorable situation led to Sony’s permission to use the Playstation trademark.
The company’s flagship Xperia Arc was used as a basis for the new gaming smartphone, with the addition of the Sony PSP Go controls. The device is smaller in size, which consequentially worsened its ergonomics. It must be said that the PSP Go was not very popular among the players, due to ergonomics issues. The difference between company’s approaches in 2010 and five years ago is striking. In 2005 the company was willing to create such a device from scratch, build a huge niche and become a leader in it. Today Sony Ericsson created a game smartphone from the marketing viewpoint, trying to maximize profits and minimize costs (same components as Arc, minimal number of unique games, weak hardware and so on). Two different approaches – two different worlds.
You might ask – Who is this smartphone for? I think that it is for those who like Sony Ericsson and want to support the company in difficult times. Playstation brand itself is experiencing hard times and real players are waiting for Sony PSP2, which will hit stores in late 2011. For hardcore players Xperia Play offers very little, and we will discuss why this is the case in more detail later. In my opinion the device does not offer sufficient functionality as a combined gaming platform – there are plenty of smartphones on the market with similar characteristics; its gaming component is better than other phones. However for the Playstation phone to be a hit, there should be more unique games. Another important fact is that these days people prefer to use tablets, not phones, as gaming devices.
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