Sony Ericsson’s upcoming PlayStation Phone is coming under fire for its tacky design – particularly when compared to some of the svelte mockups which were circulated prior to it becoming a real product.
The ideal:
The actuality:
The device itself is now believed to be set for an April 2011 release, and will follow the PSP Go model of downloadable games, although there is some speculation that the games will actually be significantly cheaper this time.
Aside from it being ridiculed for being hideous, there are also concerns over it being little more than a repackaged PSP Go – a device which proved less than successful.
With the mobile gaming market already owning PSPs or DSes and currently salivating over the 3DS, and smartphone users now having access to a huge variety of sexy phones with markedly superior capabilities to the now rather dated PSP, the PlayStation Phone’s success is somewhat in doubt.
Whether the PlayStation Phone (which carries an Android standard 1Ghz processor) actually uses PSP hardware or is merely an emulator is still not clear – were Sony able to overcome its aversion to hardware it does not control, selling PSP games over Android’s Market might prove quite lucrative.
I have this thing, kind of sucks as a playstation phone but the buttons make playing GBA games a joy 😀
Wow
That “actuality” photo is purportedly a leaked, unofficial image of a SUPPOSED development model. The legitimacy of the pic is questionable, as is its finality.
But inflammatory journalism and readers blindly following are nothing new here, are they?
smart ass
a 9-digit keypad, you think that is ideal?! you people are dumb.
It should be almost exactly like it is, the difference being that it should be designed to slide both directions, exposing a QWERTY keypad on the other side.
Lower the d-pad and buttons, shrink the width of the touch sensitive pad and relocate the select/start buttons bellow it. Then there should be enough space for that, provided they made the rail system correctly.
I wasn’t going to buy this crap from the get go. PSP does me just fine for music vids, and games. I don’t want a tiny handheld like that for games anyhow. It would be awesome if someone modified it to look like the ideal pic though…