Sony Pondering Game/Phone Hybrid

A report from a Japanese business publication says Sony is currently making plans to develop a cell phone with gaming capabilities in order to compete with the iPhone. "Sony plans to set up a project team as early as July to develop a new product that combines functions of its portable game player and Sony Ericsson's mobile phones, the Nikkei said." This comes shortly after news that the new PSP Go will be open to "non-gaming applications."

That could be pretty cool

[Nursie]

I know, I know, it's hip on /. to hate Sony for their DRM and rootkits, and their music division *can* go screw themselves in the eye over that one.

But I like their consumer electronics, they're pretty and they're slick. A game device/phone coming from such a giant could be a huge thing.

Re:That could be pretty cool

[Canazza]

the N-Gage was more a gaming console than it was a phone (Atleast, the first one was) and it wasn't terrible. It had a few good games on it, but the catalogue was meagre at best. And using it as a phone was laughable. It felt like holding a banana to your head.

The second one was better on the banana front, but again, a lack of games and marketing doomed it to failure.

Sony has alot of gaming clout, and any hand-held phone/console would most likely be able to run existing PSP games, giving it a significant back catalogue to start out with.

Pretty, yes, slick, no

[Chuck Chunder]

These days the usability of a device has to be counted as a significant part of it's slickness. Sony devices get marks for looking nice when they are turned off but always seem to fall short when you want to use them.

Too little too late

[WeirdingWay]

They'll never compete with the App Store and the momentum it's built. Knowing Sony they'll come up with a new proprietary hardware format and given their history, odds are not in favor of its survival.

Competition!

[Frogbert]

This is more competition in the market, it can only be a good thing.

If it sucks, no one will buy it, if it has great features, other phones will innovate to keep up.

Homebrew?

[tepples]

SCEA PR rep Al De Leon said:

The goal in that is to enable all sorts of developers to be able to develop content for the PSP

Did he intend to include developers who operate out of home offices (like Apple's iPhone model, which copied Microsoft's XNA model)? Or is "all sorts of developers" limited to established companies with an office building and a published title on another platform, like it was on prior Sony and Nintendo platforms?