Sony Ericsson: No need for Xperia Play 2

Sony Ericsson believes the Xperia Play smartphone is powerful enough to hold its own in the near future - and poured cold water on calls for an Xperia Play 2.

Xperia Play launched earlier this year as the world's first PlayStation Certified smartphone.

It runs on Android 2.3 using a 1GHz processor with the Qualcomm Adreno 205 GPU, a four inch 854 x 480 display, a five megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and stereo speakers.

Despite it only being out for half a year, some have expressed concern that Xperia Play will soon be outstripped in the power stakes by beefier smartphones - including those with dual core processors.

Not so, Dominic Neil-Dwyer, head of market development at Sony Ericsson, told Eurogamer.

"It's devices for what devices do," he said. "This device, with the GPU integration, has been optimised for gameplay. Bearing in mind when we talk to the high-end publishers, they're very precious about the devices their games are going to be displayed upon, particularly those that are coming in from outside of mobile. They're very much impressed.

"In terms of what it can do within gaming, it's proven every time. And these are deep, technical people. They're all very impressed by the power of the device.

"When you go into things like dual core versus single core, what a lot of people don't understand or appreciate is the actual benchmarking and the ability of a device to do what they do, dual core doesn't mean it's faster. This is PlayStation Certified, and it's been proven by all of the discussions of a very technical nature we're having with publishers.

"It's not going to be outperformed that quickly."

Xperia Play was buoyed recently by the launch of Minecraft Pocket Edition and the announcement that FIFA 12 will launch on Xperia Play before other Android devices.

Sony Ericsson refuses to reveal sales data, but Neil-Dwyer said Xperia Play was "meeting expectations". "We've always viewed Q4, just because of the way the gaming industry works and the smartphone industry works, as a key period in time.

"We're very pleased with how it's going. It's meeting expectations, but our expectations for the end of the year are a lot higher."

Still, with the impending launch of the iPhone 5, some have wondered when Sony Ericsson will launch an Xperia Play 2.

"Right now our big focus is on improving the experience of Xperia Play, bringing face chat, video calling with Skype, and movies and more software updates, because we can, and bringing better games," Neil-Dwyer countered. "That's our focus.

"We're trying to create a new market. That's our thrust right now, to build a great device. It will keep improving. We'll keep upgrading the experience, the software and the games you get with it."