Vodafone takes orders for PlayStation phone

Vodafone is to give the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play - aka the PlayStation phone - away for nothing, provided you sign up for a two-year contract with £35-or-more monthly sub. Reduce your monthly payment and you'll have to cough up more up-front for the gaming handset: £99 on a £30pm tariff, or £199 on a £25pm package. It'll …

[spencer]

£500!!??

This is likely more than the NGP

More than a similar spec android tablet as well.

Fail!

[Goffee]

Umm...

NGP and this are playing two very different ballparks!

[spencer]

Not sure I understand.....

Your right - the NGP is in a different league, so why is it (probably) cheaper than the less powerful playstation phone.

...Or did I misunderstand your post?

[Anonymous Coward]

This will fail...

They want to charge for games that other companies are giving away for free or for a small fee. One source I was reading states that the games will cost about £5 which is overpriced compaired to other games on the market for hand helds. This reminds me about the Nokia N-Gage too... That never really kicked off!

And will Sony sue you if you want to play with your device like the PS3?! And I wounder if they stole LGs parts in this device too :)

[Goffee]

But the new adverts... won't anyone think of the poor advertisers?

Love the new US ads for it, in a creepy kind of way:

http://psp2roundup.blogspot.com/2011/03/okay-xperia-plays-new-ad-lady-is.html

Hmm, no icon for mad power-dressing women - Reg is lacking!

[Anton Ivanov]

Close on voice, wrong eye colour

It is supposed to be yellow, not red... Dolts... The voice is kind'a close, but could be better too...

Me coat, the one with SG1 insignia and the ZAT in the right pocket.

[b166er]

TAB ORDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope this takes off, purely so it proves the market and there are HTC etc copies so we get an open (ish) handheld gaming platform/phone.

Who cares about all the Sony dross, it's the hardware gaming controls I want.

[Leona A]

But

This is also on the 'Coming Soon' (April) list on O2 where you can 'register your interest', but the Reg has not picked that up.

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Isn't this basically just a PSP Go with a phone built in? For £500 unlocked? Seriously?

(Amazon are currently selling PSP Gos for £160 by the way)

[Dan7712]

Updating the OS

In response to Nick, do you really want Sony to update their software? From their past record of software updates all they do is remove features that they sold with the phone. For example, if this phone has a MicroSD slot on it, which it likely does, and someone finds a way to boot some other OS using the MicroSD card, Sony will likely remove this feature with an update. If you refuse, you won't be able to go online, make phone calls, text messages regardless if you used the MicroSD card just to save your data on...

Yeah, not a huge Sony fan anymore....

[Marco Alfarrobinha]

£500?

I can buy an Xbox 360, a PS3 and be left with some some change for a couple of games...