Xperia Play Launching In March

At a press conference that unveiled their upcoming line of Xperia smart phones, Sony also shed some light on the Xperia Play, which some of you might be more familiar with  as the oft-rumoured “PSP Phone.”

The Xperia Play will come with a high-definition screen, and the lower part of its body is meant to mimic a Dualshock controller. Sony confirmed that, while you can’t see them, the Xperia Play also includes the trigger buttons. The device will also allow for local wireless multiplayer. At their press conference, Sony showed off a game of Dungeon Defenders being played on the system.

50 games will be available for the device at launch, and Sony pointed to upcoming games — not necessarily in the launch window — such as Assassin’s Creed, Dead Space, Guitar Hero and Battlefield as examples of games that will be available on the device.

Mobile versions of each of these games already exist, so we aren’t sure if they’ll be ports of those same games or if they’ll be new titles. Sony did confirm that content available on other smart phones would be “optimized” for Xperia Play, however. They pointed out that they have 20 game publishers working with them.

Additionally, the PlayStation Suite program that has been reported in the past will allow for both PlayStation One and “PlayStation quality” games to be developed for the Xperia Play (and other Android devices).

While Sony didn’t announce a price for the device, Xperia Play will be releasing in March, although no regions were specified. In the U.S., the first phone carrier to distribute the device this spring will be Verizon. Sony say that the Xperia Play will come with a “legendary” PlayStation game already included in the system, but didn’t mention which one it would be.