After years of rumours and speculation, Sony Ericsson officially unveiled a mobile phone that will be able to play games originally developed for the PlayStation game console. Unfortunately, the device will only be able to play fairly old games for the original PlayStation, at least initially.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play phone was for the first time shown officially during an advertisement pause of the Super Bowl event, something that indicates Sony Ericsson's serious plans for the product. The Xperia Play be available this Spring from various operators across the world; at present it does not seem that Sony plans to impose region locks for the device, hence, the phones will be able to play games available in different regious.

Based on the information revealed earlier, the first-generation Xperia Play will be based on Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655 system-on-chip clocked at 1.0GHz, will feature 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM and so on. The smartphone that will reportedly be based on heavily customized version of Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" operating system will feature 4" screen  with 854x480 resolution. The hardware inside the Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone will be vastly different from that inside PlayStation Portable or PlayStation and therefore Sony will be able to completely control the content that will be playable on the device.

The price of Xperia Play is unclear, but it is known that eventually there will be more phones certified to play PlayStation games. As a part of its intention to provide the PlayStation experience on Android (version 2.3 and higher) based portable devices, Sony Computer Entertainment will commence a “PlayStation Certified” license program for hardware manufacturers. Through this program, SCE will offer necessary support, including development support as well as logo licensing, to ensure the delivery of PlayStation quality experience across various devices.

On the software front, SCE plans to provide PS Suite content within this calendar year, starting with original PlayStation games that will allow users to enjoy gameplay on their Android based portable devices. SCE also plans to open PlayStation Store where users will be able to download content in an easy to use environment, directly via the Android based portable devices. Moreover, SCE will provide a new game development environment in an effort to ensure new and compelling content is delivered on PS Suite, which will also offer opportunities for a wider base of developers and publishers to further expand their business on various portable devices.

Quite naturally, the original PlayStation games will attract attention of fans, who may feel nostalgia about them, but the majority of mobile gamers will hardly truly appreciate such titles. From some points of view the move of SCE may be compared to an attempt of a large game publisher to port D OS and Windows games to high-end portables. Perhaps, some people would love to go through dungeons of the original Prince of Persia once again or even experience the original Doom, but the problem is that they hardly will. Of course, some games may get popular again, but hardly enough to justify a basically new game platform.

Tags: Sony, Playstation, PSP, Android, Sony Ericsson