Sony awards PlayStation cert to HTC handsets
Game of phones
Sony announced at E3 this week that it will bring its PlayStation Mobile suite to HTC phones, including the recently-released HTC One X, One S and One V.
With PlayStation Mobile in open beta for developers, the array of content is set to grow and, as that happens, Droids with the PlayStation certification look set to have quite an advantage over those that don't.
And with Sony effectively drawing an end to its Xperia Play experiment – with the announcement that it would not be upgrading the handset to Android 4.0 – alternate smartphones with the PS-certification are set to carry Sony's gaming torch going forward.
Game over for Xperia Play?
The expansion beyond Sony handsets is a move that may give better incentive for developers to crack on with more games too. A win, win for all involved, right?
Until we see something a bit better than Crash Bandicoot materialise from the PlayStation lineup, though, we wont raise our hopes up too much just yet. ®
COMMENTS
Re: I'm surprised Google hasn't stepped in here
So, gaming is woeful because.. Of a whole load of things that aren't actually to do with a game, just telling people about it, and showing off an 'achievement'?
Personally, I'll take a good game that plays well, and doesn't bother me with any of that stuff over a voice integrated 'achievement every minute' high scored game that just doesn't have an edge.
Trophies and such are irrelevant to a game (though I'm sure it gives people bragging rights). Voice chat.. Easy enough to integrate if you wanted to (but then you'd have a load of people yelling "kill them all" manically on every train)
Why do I want to sign on to most games I play (answer, I don't; I don't want to sign on at all unless it's a MMO)..
how do the plan to unpiss off developers?
I really can't see devs running eagerly towards this after the Play disaster and it's jumbled mess of competing store fronts, near total lack of content and failed Play hardware. The subsequent Play ICS decision and cancelling any future Play devices has annoyed pretty much everyone.
Dealing with Sony Ericsson was a lot more palatable than dealing with Sony, Ericsson injected some sense and respect for both customers and developers. Something died when Sony took control.
Expect to see this struggle on largely ignored by Android users. Sony choose not to be competitive on price in their store(s), certification is only as good as the OS and device they happened to test on (their own ICS update demonstrates that) and they've made little pretence this is anything but a way to sell the same network services their other devices use. Hard to get excited.
Laziness
Put simply, it's fricking laziness.
I'm an Xperia Play owner and when I heard that there were going to be PSOne games available for it, I was really enthusiastic - a lot of my favourite titles were PSOne games - Final Fantasy, Legacy of Kain, Parasite Eve, Crash Bandicoot 3, Silent Hill - all kinds of really great PSOne titles that I would love to play on a phone with a control system that supported them natively.
Instead what happened was that after releasing the Sony owned titles like Medieval, Crash Bandicoot and WipeOut, I never saw another PSOne title released by them. What a waste, thanks to nothing more than rampant apathy.
Sony ..........
I would never have bought an Xperia Play if it was Sony not Sony Ericsson.
(There again I think most of the PS1 games sucked).
I have bought Virtua Tennis and Sonic CD though for it and would buy most of the Square Enix games if they were released outside Japan (and in English).
Don't think I would have bought it without the ICS promise either (Probably would have bought a Nexus S)
Xperia Play
Was pretty well outdated when it did finally ship, so no wonder it had a short shelf life.
Sony should have shipped it with a lighter version of the same chip they've put into the PS Vita, instead of the single core chip it did ship with.
