The PlayStation Phone • Hacker News Board

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#31

Post by muhfuhkuh » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 5:49 AM UTC

mjfern wrote: post #26

Sony has trailed in digital music, online video, and casual/social gaming. I'm glad that Sony is trying something different to get ahead of the curve as portable gaming converges with smartphones. There are several reasons, however, why I think this device may struggle in the market. For instance, who is the target market? Kids and teen gamers who buy a PSP or DS (I assume parents often pay) or young adults that curr…

"If the target market is kids or teen gamers, will they be able to afford the price of the device plus the monthly voice/data plan?"

I know plenty of parents who give their kid a PSP+DSi, and/or an iPod Touch, and a "family phone" that may be one of those cheesy sidekick sliders for texting all day.

If parents can ditch all those and give the kid one thing (presumably this PSP phone), it would almost be like making money on the deal.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#32

Post by pedanticfreak » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 6:00 AM UTC

Poiesis wrote: post #27

I am puzzled as to why the choice of Android was made (assuming it's true). A company with Sony's background would seem to have the requisite OS experience, and one would they would have learned from the recent lessons of why control over your OS is a good thing.

1) Sony uses open source, they do like it. PS2 and PS3 could run Linux. 2) Sony-Ericsson already makes the Xperia line of Android phones. The Playstation phone is the same thing, with buttons. 3) Sony has another strategic partnership with Google Android in its new line of Google TV enabled televisions and Blu-ray players.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#33

Post by pedanticfreak » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 6:11 AM UTC

mjfern wrote: post #26

Sony has trailed in digital music, online video, and casual/social gaming. I'm glad that Sony is trying something different to get ahead of the curve as portable gaming converges with smartphones. There are several reasons, however, why I think this device may struggle in the market. For instance, who is the target market? Kids and teen gamers who buy a PSP or DS (I assume parents often pay) or young adults that curr…

Perhaps there will be a WiFi-only version for the kids. Although I'm seeing younger and younger children get not just mobile phones but data plans as well.

I think the phone's success depends greatly on how well Sony can leverage its game catalog. Unfortunately Sony has proven fairly incapable of exploiting it on the PS3.

Nintendo is really missing the boat by not making a Nintendo DS Phone. A DS with even the most basic "feature phone" capabilities would be incredibly attractive to the 5 to 35 age group. You know, a dialer, a contact book, basic SMS chat, calculator, calendar, and that Opera browser they already include in the newer models. Throw in a few downloadable DSi apps and it would handily beat the webOS and Windows Phone 7 devices overnight.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#34

Post by pontifier » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 6:59 AM UTC

It's a trap! They will advertise that you can use it as a phone and a gaming device... but then they will claim that people might badmouth sony or something using the phone feature, and they will make you choose... phone or psp.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#35

Post by lukestevens » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 7:08 AM UTC

Slapping a Playstation controller on an Android phone is one of those weird last gen/this gen mishmashes that highlights Sony's struggle to cling to relevancy, imo.

Surely the iOS phenomenon (and Android & WP7) -- particularly the iPod touch -- shows that for handheld gaming a chunky controller isn't necessary.

As Gruber often points out, where _is_ the iPod touch competitor? This is likely to be too expensive to compete with the iPod touch, and too chunky/niche to compete with iPhones and other smartphones as a platform in its own right. And that's what Sony needs -- an iOS-like platform, not this strange bit of hardware.

It's pretty sad that for a company that has built some of the most popular consoles of all time, all they can come up with in 2010 is the mutant child of their controller and a generic smartphone.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#36

Post by dagw » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 7:39 AM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #19

> For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards. I... I think I'm going to cry... I never thought I'd live to see the day Sony gave up on their #*@^ing memory sticks...

This is a Sony-Ericsson product, not a Sony product. I don't know if Sony-Ericsson has ever used Memory Sticks in their products. Certainly non of them have for quite a while.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#37

Post by jsz0 » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 8:02 AM UTC

Touch gaming is great for certain types of games but physical buttons offer a totally different experience. I think a Playstation Phone could have been a big hit if Sony moved quicker. They're just way too late. At best we're going to see some Android games retrofitted with physical button controls and that's just not going to be very exciting. How are they going to convince developers to spend money targeting a non-standard Android platform that will reach so few users? I think the best bet for Sony would be to make Playstation the Android gaming brand. Work with Google to make stock Android the best gaming platform out there, work with handset makers to set some standards for input/GPUs/etc, license the PlayStation brand to Android handset makers, launch a PlayStation Android Store. Let other companies figure out how to get the hardware into people's hands. Does anyone doubt this device will be massively outdated before it even ships?

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#38

Post by yread » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 8:32 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #36

Groxx wrote: post #19

> For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards. I... I think I'm going to cry... I never thought I'd live to see the day Sony gave up on their #*@^ing memory sticks...

This is a Sony-Ericsson product, not a Sony product. I don't know if Sony-Ericsson has ever used Memory Sticks in their products. Certainly non of them have for quite a while.

They did use them. All the sizes down to M2. But they recently switched to microSD as well

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#39

Post by CrazedGeek » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 8:56 AM UTC

lukestevens wrote: post #35

Slapping a Playstation controller on an Android phone is one of those weird last gen/this gen mishmashes that highlights Sony's struggle to cling to relevancy, imo. Surely the iOS phenomenon (and Android & WP7) -- particularly the iPod touch -- shows that for handheld gaming a chunky controller isn't necessary. As Gruber often points out, where _is_ the iPod touch competitor? This is likely to be too expensive to com…

A controller might not be necessary, but for anyone that plays slightly more involved games than iOS has, it's a godsend. Playing a platformer on an iPod touch is rather annoying.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#40

Post by rythie » Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 9:20 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #36

Groxx wrote: post #19

> For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards. I... I think I'm going to cry... I never thought I'd live to see the day Sony gave up on their #*@^ing memory sticks...

This is a Sony-Ericsson product, not a Sony product. I don't know if Sony-Ericsson has ever used Memory Sticks in their products. Certainly non of them have for quite a while.

My K810i had a M2 slot