Sony Considers ‘PlayStation Phone’ November 22, 2007
Read more Consoles , Gadgets , Games , Gizmodo UK , Mobile Devices , Mobile phones , Smartphones
According to a senior Sony executive, the company likes the idea of creating a 'Playstation Phone' that would combine the facilities of a gaming console with the usual phone features.
Unlike most smoke and mirrors rumours, this one comes from Jim Ryan, Sony Computer Entertainment co-chief operating officer. There have been rumbling about this for a year now but this is the most ‘official’ rumbling to date.
According to Ryan the Playstation Phone is a ‘seductive’ possibility down the line but that there are issues to getting it right too.
“The Playstation is a proven success and so is Sony Ericsson. Convergence with the two arms working together is definitely plausible. What has been done [so far] is finding a match between a camera and a mobile phone, and that has been done wherein the mobile phone features are not reasonably inhibited and the camera is also a reasonably competitive product. It is hugely intellectually seductive to have a console-oriented phone.”
One Gartner analyst thinks it could be a winner.
“Sony Ericsson has succeeded in selling music phones and camera phones that capitalise on its well-known Walkman music player brand and its Cyber-Shot digital camera brand,” commented Diptarup Chakraborti, principal analyst at research firm Gartner. “While the Cybershot and Walkman are better selling brands from the Sony fold, Playstation almost enjoys cult status and two strong brands, SE and PS would make a strong success story for Sony.”
Still, in the short term, Apple's fledgling iPhone camp has nothing to worry about. Yet.-Martin Lynch
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
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Comments
If I were to buy this future phone, it would have to have the ability of both the MP3 and recording of video/taking phones, plus net access, plus have a decent sized HDD for storing the above and games, plus bluetooth, maybe also being able to communicate with the PSP or PS3 too.
More to the point, how would you get games on the phone? UMD disks maybe? Would the phone be similar to other gaming phones with a massive qwerty key pad - hopefully not, as a phone should be pocket friendly, not 'hug a hoodie' give me your (£££) expensive phone.