What should a Playstation Phone be?

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New photos have surfaced purporting to be an early prototype of the Playstation phone. These shots have been shot down by Sony as “definitely fake“.

A Playstation phone–especially one that is rumored to be running the next version of Android, called Gingerbread–is a very compelling device. Sony’s foray into the mobile gaming marketing isn’t really marked with any success, but a Playstation phone might change all that.

Here are some suggestions that would help in the success of such a phone.

Brand it as a Playstation phone. Not a Sony Erricson phone. There’s a big difference in mindshare. People do not care for Sony Erricson phones. People want a Playstation phone.

Market it as a Playstation gaming device… that also does Android. Notice that there’s a difference between this and “an Android phone that plays Playstation games.” There are many Android phones available, but the Playstation Phone has the potential for being the Android phone to have, similar to how the PS3 is the blu-ray player to have.

Build a PSP2 platform and sell games through a proprietary marketplace. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that Sony should brand it as the new PSP2. The current PSP has largely been a failure, and to continue to ride that horse might prove to be a mistake. Regardless, Sony needs to make a distinctive gaming platform for it. The games should:

• Be separate from the Android platform. Games made for it should run only on the Playstation phone and not on any Android phone; perhaps a proprietary identifying chip in the phone can facilitate that aspect. People should have to buy a Playstation phone to run Playstation games. Gamers shouldn’t be able to get any Android phone.
• Should be sold in its own marketplace, separate from any Android marketplace.
• Be accessed through a proper, sensible UI. Sony should make sure that customers understand the difference between a Playstation phone game and an Android app.
• Take full advantage of a multitouch screen and the physical buttons available.

And Sony should also make it backwards compatible with old, downloaded PSP games. (Abandon the UMD.)

Cater to developers as a mobile gaming platform. Here’s a difference between the smartphone platforms and mobile gaming platforms: the interaction between hardware companies and its developers. For the most part, smartphone makers release an SDK. The developers make an app and that app makes it to a marketplace (or not). Sony shouldn’t necessarily follow Apple or Google in this regard. Gaming device makers (Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft) have a closer relationship to their developers. They provide beta units and work hand-in-hand during development. The end result are higher quality games.

Keep it up to date. The Google Android platform has one particular annoyance that might prove to be compounded in such a device: hardware manufacturers (and the carriers) tend to slack off on updating their handsets to work with the latest version of Android. To many, this fragmentation isn’t a problem, because they can just buy a new phone. This might not be the case with the Playstation phone however, because while people are willing to chuck a G1 for a new EVO, they’re less willing to throw away an old PSP for a new PSP. Sony should work with Google to make sure that you have the latest version of Android on the phone at all times. Only then would people be assured that their brand new gaming device won’t be obsolete in a single year.

Connect it to the Playstation 3. This doesn’t mean bolting on the Playstation Network to the phone. (Microsoft is doing this with XBOX Live and the new Windows Phone 7 phones, and frankly it feels like an afterthought.) Nor does this mean that people should be able to buy games from the Playstation Store on the PS3 and transfer them to the phone using an expansion card or a USB cable. (Though Sony should provide that capability too.) A true relationship between a console and its portable counterpart would involve some sort of additional functionality that Playstation 3 games give to Playstation phone owners. What that is depends on the creativity of the game developers.

Provide cheap games or make the games sharable and re-sellable. Even today, Sony’s competition are games available from Apple’s app store, which usually cost $.99 or $1.99. These games–though not as immersive as those available for the PSP or the DS–are priced at the point where buying a game is practically an impulse buy. Can the Playstation phone have games that match that? Providing games at $5.99 would certainly help, even if those games are DRMed to one account. Otherwise, if Sony (or developers for that matter) insist on pricing games at $19.99, then make sure they can be placed on expansion cards and shared with my friends or transferable to a different account.

Provide a multiplayer environment worth using. The Nintendo DS has wifi to provide their gamers a multiplayer experience, but no one really uses it. The iPhone has had better success by utilizing a cellular data connection. This allows more distance between players, as they’re not locked down to an access point. It seems Sony already understands this. Regardless, Sony will have to figure out a way to provide a multiplayer experience to the phone owners, even while device owners have a close-it-at-anytime mindset.

Choose an angle. When Nintendo released the Wii, they chose a market (common person) that was the opposite of the target of the PS3 and the XBOX 360 (the hardcore gamer). Now, the iPhone has the common person as their target market, and Nintendo is going back to target the hardcore gamer with the 3DS. Who will be the target of the Playstation phone?

Design it well. Remember the Nokia NGage? Let’s learn from its mistakes, shall we. It failed largely because it looked really ugly and it was almost unusable as a phone. The Playstation phone needs to look distinctively like a sleek, Sony style product. Like the Apple iPhone, customers have to be proud to take it out of their pockets to use it. It can’t look like every other Android phone out there. It can’t look like any of the Sony Erricson phones either. People should be able to be fifteen feet away and exclaim, “Hey, is that a Playstation phone?”