MWC 2011: Hands-on with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play - second opinion

Following our initial hands-on with Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play - the first of its PlayStation certified phones - we've spent more time with the device, refining our opinion in the process.

The first thing to note is that the Xperia Play is well equipped but only moderately powerful. It runs a 1GHz Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm, which includes an Adreno 205 GPU.

This isn't the most powerful option within the Snapdragon family. There are already some 1.4GHz devices, not to mention 1.2GHz dual cores, also combined with a top-end Adreno 220 GPU.

However, thanks to some optimisation to elements such as the memory bandwidth, the silicon is specifically suited to gaming, so Xperia Play offers more capacity than some better specced phones, and will happily run all Android games released in 2011.

It's a similar story of form and function when it comes to its physical appearance. The slider design means it can only be described as 'chunky' when used in the closed state.

The build quality is fine, but the finish in terms of external casing is shiny and plasticky, looking and feeling rather cheap. No doubt this is partly a cost issue.

But slide out the PlayStation controls and things get a lot better. The mechanism itself is robust and well made. It requires reasonable force to open and won't accidentally expose its controls.

The D-pad and various buttons are solid and provide a good tactile response, although the two shoulder buttons are, like the casing, plasticky and feel cheap. Space restrictions also mean there's less travel on the buttons than is ideal, but, stuck as they are to the side of a phone, there's not much that can be done about that.

As for the games that were available to play, they seem to be in various states of optimisation.

Glu Mobile's Gun Bros - which uses the two analogue touch pads to directly replace its twin-stick touch controls - works very well. The new controls are much more precise and enjoyable to use than the original touchscreen controls, which on occasions can be sticky.

Of course, you can revert back to touchscreen controls using the Xperia Play if you so wish, but you'll have your hands back obscuring the screen, removal of which is one of the main selling points of the phone.

Similarly well tweaked was Digital Legends's Bruce Lee Dragon Master beat-'em-up. This shifted from its effectively twin touch stick controls to using the D-pad for movement, in conjunction with two of the face buttons for punch and kick combinations.

Presumably this was a more complex conversion process than Gun Bros in terms of changing the timings between control inputs and character animation and reactions. Even so, it plays well, though it feels harder than the iOS release.

Much less successful is Gameloft's space combat title Star Battalion. This uses the left analogue pad to control your spaceship, but despite my turning the sensitivity right down the game was effectively unplayable due to the additional granularity of movement provided by the analogue pad compared to the original touchscreen controls.

Presumably Gameloft is still working through such issues. It also needs to look at the version of Asphalt 6 embedded on devices, as that doesn't seem to have any support for Xperia Play's hard controls, merely providing players with the standard mix of touch or tilt as in the version for a standard Android HD device.

What's clear about the Xperia Play is that its long-term success will rest on the care that developers take to make the most out of its unique features - its physical controls.

As a standard Android device, all touchscreen Android games will run on the Xperia Play. But if developers and publishers want to charge a premium for content, they'll have to ensure they're providing premium content, and that means supporting those controls properly.

And, of course, while it's a shame the device itself doesn't feel higher quality, hopefully this means Sony Ericsson will be able to minimise the price point, making it available to many millions of gamers, and in turn, ensuring a big install base for developers to supply with a good flow of enabled content.