10 tantalising videos of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play in action
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play was one of the big announcements at MWC 2011, but just how good are its games? Although it’s being pitched as the Playstation phone, that’s only going to work if the games are as good as the Playstation itself.
So far we’ve seen examplse of the Xperia Play as a phone, but not an awful lot about the way it played the games themselves, and let’s face it, they’re an absolutely crucial component of this brand new phone.
Fortunately, the Xperia Play has now been publicly released and will be on sale in March, and Sony Ericsson has been only too happy to show it off in all its glory. Finally, then, we get to see whether or not it lives up to all the hype.
I know what I think – but to give you a good idea of whether the Xperia Play really deserves the PlayStation brand, I’ve compiled 10 videos of the Xperia Play in action, including six videos of some brand new Xperia Play games in action, all of which will be available at launch
Official videos of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
First up, here’s the somewhat creepy official video from Sony Ericsson.
And here’s the less creepy video that actually shows you the Xperia Play in action:
Hand-on videos of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
But that doesn’t really tell us too much about what the games are like on the Xperia Play, which is really what we’re after. So let’s see some hands-on demos at MWC 2011:
OK, that’s given us a taste of what the Xperia Play is like as a phone. Turns out it’s really quite nice. The user interface is very fluid, there’s little if any slow down, and all though it’s only got a 5 megapixel camera, we can let it off as the Xperia Play is all about the games, not the photo taking abilities.
So it’s a really good Android phone with the typical Android Gingerbread experience, with some nice Sony Ericsson touches added to it, such as the Timescape widget (which thankfully runs much better than it did on the Xperia X10).
Great – but what about the games?
OK, here they are – sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and prepare to be very excited indeed!
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play games
Sony Ericsson really seems to have pulled off the magic of the PlayStation brand with the Xperia Play. The games look simply fantastic, they play incredibly well thanks to the dedicated game controller, and thanks to the quality of Sony’s PlayStation back catalogue (not to mention the quality of the game developers who’ve rushed to develop games for the phone), there are some genuine triple-A titles on offer.
If you’re a gaming fan, the Xperia Play could just be the phone you’ve been yearning for since the untimely demise of the Nokia N-Gage!
Here are some of the top titles that will be available at launch (there will be 50 titles on offer at launch, priced around $10 each).
Dungeon Defender on Xperia Play
First up is Dungeon Defender, which gives a really good impression of the graphics capability of the Xperia Play.
Gun Brothers
Gun Brothers is a 2D shoot-em up that look superb. Excellent, really fluid graphics, and it’s the type of game that can only work to its full potenital with dedicated gaming controls (if you tried controlling your character via the touchscreen, you’d obscure too much of the action).
Bruce Lee
One of the things the PlayStation earned a reputation for was playing fighting games really really well. Fotrntately, the Xperia Play carries on that tradition, as you can see here with Bruce Lee. Again, playing this using just the touchscreen just wouldn’t be an option, but the Xperia Play comes with the PlayStation’s iconic four button keypad, the direction keypad, and also a dual-touch controller.
This is the small strip of metal you see between the two keypads. It’s touch sensitive and lets you control your player by sliding your thumbs across it.
Fifa 10
Exemplifying the strong range of titles Sony Ericsson has lined up for the launch of the Xperia Play is Fifa 10 from EA. This is a huge franchise, and EA has done it – and the Xperia Play – proud. Football games are notoriously difficult to control thanks to the number of different players on the pitch at any one time, the fast movement of the ball, and the range of different movements you can via differnet button combinations.
The Xperia Play makes all of this as easy tio play as it was on the PlayStation (i.e. not easy, but no worse than on the PlayStation!), which is a huge achievement given the action takes place on a 4″ screen!
Galaxy On Fire
One game that really shows off the graphical prowess of the Xperia Play is Galaxy On Fire. Check out the video below and marvel at the explosions – you don’t see those on Angry Birds!
Summary
These are just some of the games that will be available on the Xperia Play. Other titles will include The Sims, Guitar Hero and Assassins Creed, which should all ensure the Xperia Play’s success as a portable games machine.
It’s odd that the Xperia Play doesn’t have the same spec as some of the other flagship phones that have been launched this year, and in many respects its hardware is a poor relation of the dual-core phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II, which aside from the raw power of their main processors, also have advanced 3D graphics accelerators on board as well.
But as gamers everywhere will tell you, it’s not all about the power of the system – it’s the quality of the games that matters the most, and with the Xperia Play, Sony Ericsson really seem to have a winner on their hands.
Really looking forward to reviewing this phone when it launches in March!
