The Xperia PLAY, previously known as the PlayStation Phone, made its debut at GDC this afternoon and will launch in the US towards the end of March, but what about the Australian release date? And what carriers will support it?
After a quick chat with a Sony Global Marketing Manager, we were informed that the Xperia PLAY would be rolled out in the US and Western Europe in March. Australians could expect to see the phone make its debut between May and June, and it will be available across all carriers – including Telstra, Vodafone and 3.
We also managed to spend a good 15 minutes going hands on with the Xperia and left feeling quite impressed. The d-pad felt crisp, if a little clicky, and the analogue touch pads were far more responsive than I expected. I found that I could precisely control movement – not to the extent of a regular analogue stick of course, but definitely more precise than your usual shoehorned touch controls.
As you’d expect, Sony are hoping for a large gamer uptake when it comes to the Experia PLAY, and that was reflected by the partnerships announced at the conference, announcing deals with Major League Gaming, Havok and Unity.
“At MLG, we aim to showcase the latest technology that will benefit our community of gamers,” said Sundance DiGiovanni, CEO, MLG. “XperiaTM PLAY is an amazing smartphone and a stellar gaming device bringing the best mobile capabilities to our audience.”
David Coghlan, Managing Director of Havok praised the device.
“As part of Havok’s overall support for the AndroidTM platform, we are very pleased to partner with Sony Ericsson to put the full power of the Havok product line into the hands of XperiaTM PLAY developers. We were extremely impressed by the performance of the XperiaTM PLAY and the ease with which we were able to port and optimise our technology to the platform. This will enable developers to use Havok technology to create cinematic, rich 3-D immersive games for AndroidTM smartphones with XperiaTM PLAY in the forefront.”
More as we get it.
Originally published at Kotaku Australia
Astroboy440
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 6:07 PMI hope this isn’t another N-Gage. Time will tell. I hate myself for loving my Iphone and would love a good enough reason to ditch it.
Ward Paterson
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 6:24 PMNeeds more dual core……
Carl Bowers
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 7:25 PMDefinitely my next phone.
I hope they have a good game lineup by the time we get it.
smee, T
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 7:43 PMReally want to look into this.
A smart phone with video game controls interests me, the idea of bring up my GBA or GBC collection using it seems like a nice idea. Gotta find out if Android has any nice translation apps too I guess.
Rich @ Unifor
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 8:33 PMGetting excited about the Xperia PLAY hitting Aussie shores – can’t wait!
Daniel
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 5:37 PMdoes all carriers incude Virgin Mobile?
Ross
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 12:32 PMcant wait!!
Joseph
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 3:35 PMI need one now dammit stop delaying!!!
The graphics are already out of date now let alone when they finally get around to releasing it here!!
Michael
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 8:13 AMI got one from Telechoice at Burwood, NSW a few days ago.
It is awesome. Add the Genesis, SNES and Gameboy emulators also and you have thousands of games.