Xperia Play

The PlayStation phone: a slide-out gamepad on an Android handset, one model, one year, no Android 4.0

Shut down
19902026

The Xperia Play was a Sony Ericsson Android smartphone with a slide-out PlayStation-style gamepad, leaked as the PlayStation Phone in 2010, announced at Mobile World Congress on 13 February 2011 and released from 1 April 2011, reaching Verizon in the US on 26 May 2011 at $199. It ran Android 2.3 with a PlayStation Pocket app for PS1 classics and games built for its controls. Sony cancelled its Android 4.0 update on 25 May 2012 and never made a successor.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2010
  2. 26 October 2010 other
    The PlayStation Phone leaks

    Engadget publishes photographs of the prototype.

  3. 2011
  4. 13 February 2011 Launch
    Announced at Mobile World Congress

    Android 2.3, slide-out PlayStation pad, PlayStation Pocket.

  5. 1 April 2011 Launch
    On sale in Europe

    O2 delayed the UK launch by a week.

  6. 26 May 2011 Launch
    Verizon launch in the US

    $199 on contract, later $99.

  7. 2012
  8. 16 February 2012 Acquisition
    Sony completes the Sony Ericsson buyout

    Sony Mobile Communications.

  9. 25 May 2012 Shutdown
    Android 4.0 update cancelled

    The phone is left on Android 2.3; no successor.

The site through time

Browse sonyericsson.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2011 2012 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Sony Ericsson 2011–2012 Founded A Sony and Ericsson joint venture
Sony Mobile 2012–2012 Acquisition Sony bought out Ericsson; cancelled the Android 4.0 update three months later

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Sony, which had bought out Ericsson's half of the joint venture in February 2012, said on 25 May 2012 that the Xperia Play would not get the promised Android 4.0 update because "a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed"; the beta was withdrawn and the phone was left on Android 2.3. No successor was ever made. Sales had been weak from the start, with Verizon cutting the price from $199 to $99 within months, and the PlayStation Certified programme it launched moved to ordinary Xperia phones and tablets.

Our analysis: The Xperia Play arrived a year late, in a body that was thick for 2011 and with a single-core chip when quad-cores were coming, and with a PlayStation catalogue of a few dozen PS1 games and Android ports with buttons mapped. It was the right idea, physical controls on a phone, at the moment the phone market decided it did not want them; touch games and later clip-on pads did the job. Sony Ericsson itself was being absorbed into Sony as it shipped, and nobody was left to fight for a second one.

History [edit]

The PlayStation Phone

Rumours of a Sony gaming phone went back years, and in October 2010 Engadget published photographs of the real thing: an Android handset with a slide-out pad carrying the PlayStation d-pad and face buttons and two flat touch "analogue" pads where the sticks would be. Sony Ericsson announced it as the Xperia Play at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on 13 February 2011, with a Super Bowl advert a week earlier in which the phone was stitched together in an operating theatre. It had a 4-inch 854 by 480 screen, a 1 GHz Snapdragon with an Adreno 205, 512 MB of RAM, Android 2.3 and a PlayStation Pocket app for buying PS1 games; Crash Bandicoot came preloaded, and about sixty games were optimised for the pad at launch, from FIFA to Minecraft Pocket Edition.

It went on sale in Europe from 1 April 2011, after O2 delayed the UK launch by a week over software bugs, and in the US on Verizon on 26 May 2011 at $199 on contract, followed by AT&T. Reviews liked the controls and the idea and found the phone itself ordinary; by the autumn Verizon had cut it to $99. Sony Ericsson said it had shipped a respectable number but never gave figures, and the PS1 catalogue never grew past a few dozen titles.

No update, no sequel

Sony bought Ericsson's share of the joint venture in a deal completed on 16 February 2012 and became Sony Mobile. The Xperia Play had been promised Android 4.0, and a beta was released; on 25 May 2012 Sony cancelled it, saying gaming performance could not be guaranteed. The phone stayed on Android 2.3 and disappeared from shops during 2012. The PlayStation Certified label it had launched went to ordinary Xperia phones and to Sony tablets, and Sony's next attempt at PlayStation on a phone was Remote Play. Its owners moved to custom ROMs; a homebrew community keeps it running.

The domain today

sonyericsson.com redirects to Sony Mobile, then to Sony's Xperia pages, which have no trace of the Play.

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Sources [edit]

  1. The PlayStation Phone Engadget 26 October 2010 [archived]
  2. Live from Sony Ericsson's MWC 2011 press event Engadget 13 February 2011 [archived]
  3. Sony Ericsson Spain confirms Xperia Play for 649 euros on April 1st Engadget 14 March 2011 [archived]
  4. O2 delays Xperia Play UK launch Eurogamer 25 March 2011 [archived]
  5. Sony Ericsson Xperia Play hits Verizon for $200 on contract, in stores May 26th Engadget 17 May 2011 [archived]
  6. Watch the PlayStation Phone actually play games Gizmodo 25 January 2011 [archived]
  7. Sony axes Xperia Play Android 4.0 upgrade SlashGear 25 May 2012 [archived]

Last verified: 16 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).