Xperia Play gets UK debut date

Sony Ericsson's PlayStation phone - the Xperia Play - now has a UK release date and price. It has also been confirmed that the gadget will come with six pre-installed games. The six titles have changed slightly since we discussed the launch of the Xperia Play at Mobile World Congress. The UK line-up is now: Bruce Lee Dragon …

[Lottie]

Great!

But if they've not REALLY invested in the battery tech, it'll be pretty fucking poor.

[Anonymous Coward]

what a waste

of keyboard real estate. once the xperia pro is launched this will be toast. would it have been too difficult to have alternate key bindings on a full qwerty keyboard? as in "AWSD" for left, up. right"down and some other bindings for fire, etc on the RHS of the keyboard?

FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.... and mega FAIL

[eclairz]

Win for gaming

AWSD only works with a full size keyboard, but with a small phone keyboard, where your controlling a game character, you might be mishitting the wrong key as you should be looking at the screen and not the keyboard. Keyboards just suck for simplifying the layout of a system in a hand held.

Nintendo discovered that less is more with their original gameboy systems, directional pad and 2 quality buttons. They could have had more lower quality buttons, but they didn't 2 buttons with high quality micro-switches beneath each key. Thus making it more responsive, i'll take a few more easily distinguished buttons than many indistinguishable keys for playing games.

But for typing i'd prefer a keyboard of course, ideally i'd wish there was a snap on system for different systems or raised buttons to clearly distinguish buttons from each other. I have a Nokia N900, and it has a decent keyboard maybe not good as the blackberry keyboards, but better than most. However playing action oriented games was a pain, I kept miss hitting the wrong key during games, even though i can text fairly competently.

Hopefully some operators can give this phone a low price to make it worth while

[zanto]

@eclairz

"AWSD only works with a full size keyboard, but with a small phone keyboard, where your controlling a game character, you might be mishitting the wrong key as you should be looking at the screen and not the keyboard. Keyboards just suck for simplifying the layout of a system in a hand held."

you're holding it wrong.

--

sent from my iphone

[jai]

meh

i'll wait for the NGP

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Free gifts...

Apparently the first one to hack it gets a free subscription to PSN+, a visit from the FBI and CIA, plus the added bonus of having their IP addresses subpoenad and civil rights and violated by some Hicksville "judge".

[Lunatik]

letters and/or digits

Last years hardware is going to look pretty mediocre by this time next year. There isn't anything in there that makes this product stand out, apart from Sony Ericsson's hitherto notoriously poor post-sales Android support that is.

Wrong time to launch such a product?

[Bill 2]

Knowing Sony

They will remove the ability to make a voice call 6 months after its been released on the grounds that it might compromise the security of the device.

[zanto]

yep

but that would be ok see because most of the fanbois would not be using it to make calls. those that do would just be a disruptive minority like them no good scum trying to run linux on a ps3

now ain't nobody forcin you to buy this here fine fone sonny boy see? so if you do, you make damn sure you uses it the way we tells ya to uses it or you don't uses it at all.

now, hand me ma beer and then bend over and take it like sport.

and quit hollerin!!

[Eddie Edwards]

Analog sticks look interesting

They seem to be using mousepads as analog sticks - interesting approach given the form-factor.