As you may have expected, the Xperia Play was all over the place at GDC 2011 and we had plenty of time to play lots of games on them. While most games being played are already out for Android devices, some are not, such as the Bruce Lee game. There was also a lot of news about the Xperia Play and also a lot of news missing.
Most notably from the missing news department was the fact that Sony Ericsson didn’t announce any pricing at all which was rumored to happen at GDC 2011. This was actually surprising considering how close to market release the Xperia Play is. Even when we pushed for any sort of word about official pricing at the Sony Ericsson booth, everyone there was silent.
Another interesting bit of info that kept popping up was the fact that many booths displaying the Xperia Play to demo their goods, including Sony Ericsson’s own booth, had only gotten the units a few days before GDC 2011 even started. I’ll admit this did bring up concerns about how much of a stock of Xperia Play devices are currently ready for shipping so close to market release.
Since most games being shown off on the Xperia Play are standard Android games, hands-on videos of each one seemed sort of repetitive but we did snag some video of the Bruce Lee game for all of you to enjoy. This brings us to our next bit of news about the Xperia Play after the video.
Sony Ericsson is rumored to be trying to spearhead development (and sales) of the Xperia Play at time of launch with games exclusively for the Xperia Play. These games will most likely have controls that will only work with the Xperia Play and no other Android device, at least for a short while. Games of an exclusive nature could come from any major developer but PocketGamer seems to think that Gameloft would be the most obvious choice. This could certainly be true but EA also has games that could benefit greatly from the controls of the Xperia Play. Actually a lot of games could in general from various companies.
Again though, as with all rumors, take it with a grain of salt but it certainly does hold merit especially now that we are seeing games coming out for Tegra 2 only devices exclusively although most games will be available for other Android devices in the future. Another interesting bit of information we picked up, again rumor of course, is that games designed exclusively for the Xperia Play won’t allow touch controls to work on other devices unless a second version is made. This means that even though the game may integrate touch controls on the Xperia Play, if you were to install it on another Android device, it would not be playable.
Overall though the impression we left with concerning the Xperia Play was a good one. It seem to be a pretty solid device and ran pretty well for the limited time we had with it. Once we get more time with one, we will be able to form a better impression of it. The lack of any sort of dual-core processor in the Xperia Play still concerns us considering it is a gaming device and makes us wonder if it’ll be outdated the moment it comes out.
