Happy gamer Xperia Play initial thoughts review.

Smart phones tend to have cheap touchscreen and accelerometer games that are basically online flash games. But Sony has created a phone that's part psp and it is good.

I first saw the Xperia Play in an article about phones through my yahoo portal. They made it sound like it was on it's way out, but then Verizon started advertising it and it got me very interested. I looked up a review and it sounded really cool. Well today I had to go to the Verizon store, read about my slightly eventful day here, and I had some time to play around with the phones. I immediately went out to find the Xperia Play so I can play around with it. And it was really cool.

While I can't talk about how well the service is, mainly because I can't call or text from the demo phone. But like most smart phones, it has a touch screen, and it is very responsive. It has a slide out pad like many other phones. But unlike most phones, instead of a keyboard it has a d-pad, 2 touch pad analog sticks, and the standard x triangle square and circle buttons. It makes it perfect for playing games. I would think that the non game services are fine, but I'm here to talk about the gaming.

When you open the slider, it goes from the menu to the games menu where you can select what game you want to buy or play that is currently on your phone. It comes with a racing game and crash bandicoot, and some others that I didn't demo at the store. Well first I demoed Crash. I bought it a while ago for my psp from psn, and it is a really fun game. I played though the first level, and it is exactly the same as the psn version. I know, I played the level so many times after I beat the game so I could 100%. It is exactly the same, and the controls for it are the same. I wasn't able to use the touch analog sticks, but the game feels better using the d-pad.

After that I tried the racing game I didn't get to pay much, but what I did it was pretty good. For that one I tried the touch analog sticks. It could just be that I wasn't used to the analog stick things, but they didn't respond very well. The racing game it's self was...well a racing game. I'm not a big fan of racers. They are fun, but I wouldn't spend a lot of time playing them. For free I'd enjoy it, but not sure I would buy it. But it's free so who cares. And it is playable with the d-pad, so you don't have to worry about having to play with the bad analog stick things. On the side where they should be, there was the l and r shoulder buttons.

Now is a god time to talk about price. I did take a quick look at the marketplace. And the games seemed decent, and with decent prices. It was like $3 to get a pac man game, and that seems reasonable. I don't know about storage, but I would believe that it would use a micro storage device like a micro sd, or since it's Sony, a micro memory stick. Games that I download from psn take up a fair amount of spece, like between 500 megs and 2 gigs. But since it's a phone, it could just stream. I don't know all the specifics since I haven't researched it much, but I would believe that it is reasonable with the storage. But the price is a bit of a downer, but I guess it's reasonable. The price at my store was $129.99 plus tax and contract. Initially when I saw that I thought it was a bit pricey, but then I thought about what I payed for my used psp. I payed $90 for it, and I just looked up the price for a new psp go, which is basically what this is, and it's $179.95 on amazon. The price of a new psp 3000 on amazon is $129, about the same price as this phone. So with the Xperia play you get most of a pspgo and a phone all in one. If you have the money to spend, I would say buy it. It's a really cool smart phone, and I think I'll get it for my first smart phone. So until next time, (Spock spread) game on and have fun.