14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has long said that it does not want to compete with the iPhone and the various clones of the Apple product that make it on the market. The official position of the Japanese company is that the existence of such products only emphasizes the “premium” position on the market that the PlayStation Portable occupies and that the PSP Go will inherit when it is released later in the year.
But the official position does not necessarily tell the whole truth and reputable sources are saying that Sony is working closely with Ericsson in order to create a hybrid between a regular phone and a handheld gaming device, which will probably be known as the PSP phone.
Reuters is quoting the Nikkei business daily as saying that the two companies are working together to get a team going on the initial development of the device, which should allow gamers to play the titles that they currently enjoy on the PlayStation Portable while also mimicking the functionality of a modern smartphone.
Sony has already taken some steps to counter the threat that smartphones pose to gaming platforms by opening up the PSP for “non gaming applications” created by developers and by making development kits cheaper.
SEGA, Square Enix and Capcom, along with a myriad of other smaller developers, are not creating videogames for smartphones and if Sony, which is already well known as a hardware maker and as a videogame publisher, puts together the PSP Phone, then it can be assured that many developers would be ready to support it.
The big problem for Sony is that development of the PSP Phone is beginning a bit late. Creating it might take a year or so and by the time it is out, the iPhone and the various Android-powered alternatives might have such a big share of the market that the Japanese company will find it hard to gain enough traction for its device.