You know what could make this thing sell like the new hot shit? Let it play PSP games. Sweet Jesus Sony, let it play PSP games and UMDs.

LOL... sometimes Kotaku comes up with the cruelest art :) At least the color says Sony... it must be the PSPhone just on it's shear dust gathering potential.... ahhhh, potential.

This is the main reason why i'm holding off on getting an iPhone... :P

@Stratovarius:
That would require a monster of a screen for a phone...psp games are designed for psp screens... wouldnt be the best idea.

@TheApprentice: Haha what the.. You people can stop dreaming. Any company that tries to go against Apple and the iPhone are doomed to crash and burn in a flaming ball of failure.

@FyroniK:

Smaller screen, make it flip. Yes, it will cost an arm and a leg, but that's pretty much historical Sony at this point.

People still want to play games on their phone? Seriously every game i've played on a mobile phone sucks. Just about the only game that doesn't is Snake and look how old that is...

But more on topic, i think Sony can do a good job at it. The Sony Ericsson brand is pretty good and if they can combine it with the same interface on screen as the PSP and make the key/number pad more accessible for gaming then it should be ok.

Anybody want to hazard a guess at what unnecessary proprietary format they will shoe horn into this?
I would suggest extremely long numbers but Nintendo has that one sewn up.

@Soldrak: you never know...Sony may pull this off...

I have that phone... it's such a classic!

I don't know why Sony wants to get into the phone business when the iPhone basically tells all other phones (except maybe the sidekick) to just go fuck themselves. That's like trying to release the Phantom.

Sony lost their "cult" status when the jumped into this console generation.

*they

If they want to beat the iPhone, make a phone that works on any network. That would actually give it an advantage over the iPhone.

@Soldrak: Are you serious? Apple is not nearly a dominating force in the cel market, compared to RIM or Nokia.

@Akvj1n: Apple is no doubt growing in this market... but it will take another year or 2 to be as big as Nokia/Samsung/Motorola/Sony

@Akvj1n: Apple is a relatively new entrant into the cell market. You're joking about Nokia right? Their market share has been shrinking quite rapidly for almost five years now ever since Motorola started to aggressively compete with their Razr line. I don't know what planet you're on, but on this planet iPhone adoption is skyrocketing and Nokia sales are declining.

Yeah Phone games suck...so this better be better then ngage.. cause that was 200 bucks ill never get back....

My DS is the best...psp is cool dont get me wrong, great Graphics and perfect screen.....but I like my ds better.

Apple really hasn't cut a big notch into the phone market. Nokia still does hold a pretty big share at least 10% i would think. I mean compare the numbe of people with an Iphone to the number with a Sony Erricson (most of the people i know have one of those they're really nice cheap phones.) A playstation branded phone would only appeal to more people. And if you played Rainbow Six or GoW for your phone i think you'd disagree that mobile games suck.

It's not like the PSP is doing so well that they need to make another portable gaming device. I think they should either A) add cellphone functionality to the PSP or B) conentrate efforts elsewhere like a $400 PS3 WITH BC plz

Primarily a gaming device, and secondarily a phone? Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah. N-Gage. We all know how that set the world on fire.

funny that SCEE is still denying its existance... my fiancee does technical support for sony-ericsson, and they've already got all sorts of information on it...

now if I could just get her to part with one of the free phones they give her...

Sony are now losing their casual gaming status. PS1 sold because it was an advancement in its day, then when the N64 came out the PS1 was a hell of a lot cheaper. The PS2 was a top of the range when it came out and had all the best games but got cheaper and cheaper so it became casual for people to have one. the PS3 is too expensive especially with the 360 on the market and doesnt have enough exclusives for this PSfone to take off. maybe about 6 or 7 years ago when people didnt know any better and thought Sony are the only console out. personnaly i think microsoft have a better chance then this.

I could see some other company going to mobile games because they can't get into the handheld/console market, but sony has done both... well! what are they thinking with this?

its like if the wii made some kind of phone it would be a hit. Sony have kinda lost it,

@NeoAkira: I will not hold my PSP up to my face and talk into it. I simply won't.

@Weirdwolf: You know they'll think of something. Other than the obligatory Memory Stick support. I hate that format, so very, very much, but my PSP demands it. I'd sacrifice what little extra space would be necessary to use compact flash any day.

wow

i'll definitely be picking one of these up

Fuck the PSPhone. I wouldn't buy it with YOUR money. I don't care what features it has.

Well, I take that back. If it has an 'electricute Sony executive' button, I'd consider it.

@TheApprentice: Just like the UMD movies?

a challenger to the iphone, interresting

@ggl: I direct your attention to the Zune. Admittedly better than iPod, but iPods are notorious for sucking if you are at all versed in the ways of portable media. Zunes are barely a step above in that their sound quality is slightly better. Unfortunately people buy marketing rather than quality. I still get people who look at me like I'm poor as all hell and that I got my Cowon D2 from some drifter's corpse when they see it. Then I chuckle since it's better in every way excluding memory.

As for a PS phone, I'm all for it. I don't use a cellphone, nor do I want one, but games for cellphones have sucked since they first came out. Anyone taking a stab at improving the market in a non-shitty (N-gage, it was ugly and huge) manner is great. Knowing Sony it will be a flashy phone. Who knows, if it takes off in Japan, it may stand a chance. Let's just hope they pay attention to battery life.

@Anemone: I neither have a mobile (cell phone) and havnt done for about 3 years and im not going to because a has been company are trying to rejuvinate sales.

@Anemone: thank you, I thought it was my imagination that iPODs sounds was awful.

@Anemone:

Unless they plan to use fuel cell batteries or have a gigantic lithium ion battery having a phone and a gaming device in one package is a guaranteed 2 hour battery life. Also the phone market is pretty competitive and not many people are looking for a cellphone that is games first and phone second, there's just not a big enough market for it. I'm sure there are ways that they could do this and not making it suck, but chances are that it will also be very expensive and that's not too great either. So it just seems like the chances of this succeeding will be very low. ALthough sony erricson phones rock.

@Shaoko: dude what?
UMD movies are not phones or comparable to phones...

phone first, games close second is good

@Viewtiful Mico: Yes, because the PS2 had a small, devoted, cult of only ten trillion.

"a product that is primarily a gaming device and secondarily a phone."

I'll believe it when I see it buddy

I have a Sony Ericsson phone granted its doesn't have all the features of a iphone or crackbery but its still the best in playing music and with the interchangeable memory stick I can constantly switch to my PS3, PsP - if I had one)

@Soldrak: You're joking about Nokia right? Their market share has been shrinking quite rapidly for almost five years now ever since Motorola started to aggressively compete with their Razr line.

That'd be true in the US, but I'm not sure it'd be true anywhere else in the world. I personally own a Motorola phone, but only because it came with a free iPod. ;P
Even then, it's several years old and I don't know anybody else in Australia who does own one. Everyone I know uses Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony-Errikson (sp?) or one of the various Windows mobiles (HP, O2, etc).

Seriously..this is the 1st time i've heard them said something about this phone since TGS..arent we a little harsh? I mean no one complained with Halo 3 was beid said for the past year. And look at it now, it sucked. same crap with slightly better graphics.

@Soldrak: Uh... I guess you live either in US or South Korea and know nothing of the rest of the world? Nokia has about 39% market share of all mobile phones out there, they sell more phones in a single quarter (111,7m) than Apple has sold iPods during it's whole lifetime (110m in 6 years). Now I'm no fan of their phones, but they are market power that diminishes all others in the mobile phone sector. Motorola, for example, shipped 37,2 million units in past quarter, third of what Nokia did. iPhone is hardly worth mentioning at this point. It's riding on it's initial hype and the iPod brand. I mean, I love the thing, but it's way too early to say anything other that they did remarkable job at pushing touch screen devices in the market. Every manufacturer has either released or demoed their similar device since Apple caught them napping and shook them up.

I think it´s more like "Pop Status" rather than Cult Status.

Like a pop star.

Like Michael Jackson.

A idol on he past, and today.. er.. you got it.

;)

@GGL: You'll note where I said that I don't dig cellphones either. So I'm with you there, I wont be buying this either. At the same time, it's nice that someone is actually trying to fix the mobile gaming market.
@EddyBrentwood: You're welcome. And you're far from crazy, anyone who shows up in an audiophile board can tell you much the same.
@NeoAkira: Nice icon, and all of your points are about spot on. I think they would be best served by making a chip/software that is put into other companies phones for gaming.

@Wyld: You obviously don't leave America much. Michael Jackson could fart on 8-track and people around the world would buy it in droves.

And for the actual article... *cough* Well, if they had equipped PSP with touchscreen and all the basic phone software I would be buying it the very second. My current phone already has more powerful CPU than PSP has, only thing that's missing is GPU and if I recall right ATi sells good ones for such devices. It wouldn't even be all that expensive compared to other smartphones if they would be satisfied with current PSP level performance. Battery is always the issue with such multitasking devices, it really sucks to have a phone with no power. It wouldn't matter so much if it were just a MP3 player or PSP, but to loose the communication device, that hurts. At least my day would be ruined by such tragedy. : P

@Anemone: I think you grossly overestimate the importance of marketing in the iPod's success. It's _relative_ ease of use, particularly on the software end, are what has lead to its success. I've never had an MP3 player that required less set-up and management time than my beat-up little Mini. Sony, Creative, all of these people have made devices with as many/more features for the same or less money, and the software always sucked. iTunes isn't perfect, but it is easy-in fact its more glaring issues only become apparent if you're a relative "power user".

Of course, I probably wouldn't even have an MP3 player if I hadn't gotten the mini free with my Laptop, I was never sold by the marketing that I really need it. Now I use it for podcasts primarily, good way to consume sports and video game news. So, if its not the highest sound quality, that doesn't make much difference.

As to this PS Phone idea, I'm torn between saying Sony shouldn't do it, because they've made many products I've enjoyed over the years (not least the PS1/2) and I don't hate the corporation in general, and hoping they'll do it and drive their games division further into the red, to further punish their arrogant executives and the more obnoxious members of their "cult". Especially if they give it UMD, a memory stick slot, and perhaps a bunch of proprietary video codec stuff, that will definitely work well ;)

Oh and just to throw it out there, Ghost Squad rocks on Wii. I like it better than the Zelda game so far.

@DaiMacculate: The iPod was the best when it first came out years ago, but since then there have been many technological advances. Apple has not kept up with them. The only thing that keeps it afloat are the comericals and the fact that when most people think of portable media devices they think 'iPod.' Think about the way old people refer to consoles as "Nintendos" (idk how to pluralize Nintendo, Reggie should make a how to video on that) The same thing happens with portal media players, but on a cultural level, not just with old people. Want to know how a D2 works? Plug it into any computer, it registers as a USB flash