There’ve been rumours about a PSP phone ever since Apple put us out of our misery and admitted that yes, it was making an iPhone. Sony has yet to follow suit though - focusing instead on releasing everything BUT a phone attachment as peripherals for its handheld gaming device.
Well, a random Japanese hacker has gone and done it for them, splicing his PSP with a touchscreen mobile handset to create The Ultimate Gaming Phone. Well, that’s as long as you don’t mind losing the ability to insert UMD discs, which means, er, not being able to play traditional boxed PSP titles.
Okay, the concept needs a bit of work. Still, we’d love one of these things to use in public, just to see people’s faces.
The PSP Phone is still being strongly denied by Sony, but in the meantime how about a Phone PSP?
Sony has used CES to announce that it is bringing the popular VoIP app Skype to its mobile games platform, starting with the next firmware update.
The update will add a Skype icon to the Network menu and will support both SkypeOut and SkypeIn to let you make and receive calls to and from ‘real’ phones in addition to Skype-to-Skype chatting.
Owners of older PSPs will be disappointed to learn that the firmware will only work with PSP-2000 devices (e.g. the PSP Lite) but don’t feel too down if you have a ‘fat’ PSP as Homebrew coders Noobz have released Furikup - a free, open source VoIP app that should work with any SIP-based provider such as SIPGate, providing your PSP has been hacked to play homebrew software.
Just weeks after Sony first hinted, then rubbished plans for a Playstation phone, programmer ZodTTD has unveiled his very own PS1 emulator for the iPhone.
Called psx4iphone, it’s currently at pre-beta stage, but is already looking promising. You can already get NES games for your iPhone but an original Playstation emulator could be huge considering how many of the little grey boxes were sold.
ZodTTD has some form in iPhone emulators, having already produced the GameBoy Advance emulator or iPhones and iPod Touches. He’s said it’ll have sound, memory card support and compatibility with around 75% of PS1 titles.
ZodTTD has said that if enough people donate via PayPal to him, he’s pretty much ready to release psx4iphone, so if you want it, get donating.
It sounds great, but the crucial differences between the iPhone’s
touchscreen controls and the PS1’s joypad might hamper enjoyment somewhat, even if he is offering onscreen controls.
You can find out more and (hopefully) download psx4iphone at ZodTTD’s site here.
Nokia’s already been here with its ill-fated N-Gage, but it seems Sony reckons the market is ready for a Playstation-branded games mobile. Well, maybe.
SCE’s co-CEO Jim Ryan hasn’t exactly said a PlayStation phone is on the cards, nor that Sony develop a mobile games platform like the N-Gage has now become.
All he’s actually said is that Sony and Sony Ericsson are working together on something: “The Playstation is a proven success and so is Sony Ericsson. Convergence with the two arms working together is definitely plausible.”
Undoubtedly the Playstation brand on a Sony Ericsson handset would be big. Huge even. Perhaps even bigger than the iPhone.
However, Ryan would only say the two companies have found ‘a match’ between a camera and a mobile phone. The most likely outcome would be phone functions integrated into a console, kind of like a PSP with phone call functions.
Just to stoke expectations, it’s also emerged that the US Patents and Trademark office has received a patent application from Sony Ericsson for a mobile with video game features on it.
We get the feeling this one’s going to run and run!
[Via Economic Times]
Update: It turns out Sony is not developing a Playstation phone. Just hours after this story hit the web, Sony’s released a statement saying that Ryan was ‘misquoted’.
“We do have talks with other arms of the Sony family about various topics,” said a Sony statement, “but I can confirm we are not currently working together on the creation of a PlayStation Phone.”
So there you have it.
Sony’s Walkman handsets have been given a significant memory boost with the release of 4GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) cards for Sony Ericsson phones.
To give you an idea of the capacity of these cards, they can store up to 3,700 shots from a five-megapixel K850 Cybershot phone, or around 4,000 songs (Or 45 hours of video footage) on a W910 Walkman phone.
Couple this beauty with the ever-expanding internal memories on Sony Ericsson’s phones and you’ll soon find yourself not needing your iPod or digital camera - you’ll simply store everything on your mobile. Of course, that’s exactly what Sony wants!
As an added bonus, Sony’s new M2 cards will also come with a convenient M2 USB adaptor (right) for connecting to computers without Memory Stick card readers.
The products will be available later this month, although pricing is yet to be confirmed.
Following recent comments made by Sony Ericsson’s Peter Ahnegard to our sister site, Pocket Gamer, Mobile Entertainment has posted a report claiming that a non-PlayStation branded Sony gaming phone will be announced at the Mobility World Congress in December.
ME’s sources say that the SE gaming phone ‘will offer a games-oriented user interface and styling, and comprise technical innovations such as motion-sensitivity, which will pave the way for Wii-like gameplay on a handset.’
With the W910i already offering some basic motion sensitivity for controlling music playback, this doesn’t sound too far fetched. But with its Cyber-shot, Walkman and Bravia brands already in the mobile world, why would Sony choose not to leverage the huge sales power of the PlayStation name?
