Xperia Play is slowly inching its way into the market, trying to make a name out of a handheld console and a smart phone, and they’ve made it perfectly clear they are trying to introduce a new market of gaming and phone into the world, but is it going to work?
Mobile gaming has hit the market with a vengeance and with the new series of smartphones coming out they just get more and more advanced, making many hand held gaming consoles left in the dust. Sony wants to change that all up on us with Xperia Play.
Xperia Play is Sony Ericsson’s new project; this beast is half smartphone and half handheld gaming console. Gamers are confused as to weather they’ll get it, and people who are looking for smart phones don’t commonly look for ones with gaming buttons, but is it going to sell?
It’s hard enough to compete within a market but they’re trying to make a create something else altogether, Dom Neil Dwyer has said that they’re trying to create a new market by attempting to bring in the small phones we know and love with the same capabilities of great gaming, in turn hopefully making it stand out from all your other choices sitting in the cellphone stands.
From their current information Dwyer has figures to suggest that Xperia Play users will be more apt and willing to spend money on “premium games” rather than just sticking to free or low-cost games, this probably being the big difference between the “casual gamer” and the more hard core gamers, or people who are much more interested in gaming rather than just wasting time.
The consumer base he’s aiming for are ‘savvy’ people, Dwyer said, but not necissarily in the technological way. “It’s more about people that are wanting to be up on the trends,” he further explains. “So I think there’s two types of people. One is someone who’s just in this because it’s the only way they want to play games, because touchscreen games aren’t great, and the other reason is a very kind of cool consumer.
He added: “So actually I’d say they’re different in terms of their profile in age. They’re kind of a younger, cooler crowd.
“The average smartphone purchaser is around 30, and then this is a younger crowd, they’re like the leaders, the trend leaders, so you see a younger crowd.”
These are comments that he said in an interview with Gamasutra, discussing early Xperia Play trends. Xperia Play was launched in March 2011.
