Sony has announced a new Xperia event for next week, which will be targeted at “Pro gamers and streamers”. Could we be seeing the return of the PlayStation phone?
The Sony Xperia Twitter account just posted the a tweet promising an “exciting announcement” to be streamed from the Sony Xperia YouTube page on September 12 at 13:00 Japan time (05:00 UK time).
We don’t know exactly what it’ll entail, but we do know that it’s an Xperia smartphone-related product. The above teaser video shows a gamer playing a game on what appears to be a smartphone, and wearing what seems to be a set of Sony’s gaming headphones.
Could we be set to receive a new gaming-focused Xperia PlayStation phone? Are we essentially looking at the return of the PlayStation phone concept?
The last attempt at an Xperia-branded PlayStation phone didn’t go so well, though we still retain a fair amount of affection for 2011’s Sony Ericsson Xperia Play with its excellent slide-out controls.
The lack of PlayStation branding in this teaser might suggest that Sony isn’t quite ready to capitalise on its games console heritage in the smartphone space, but we live in hope. We haven’t seen a new Sony portable gaming machine since the revised PlayStation Vita model hit the global market in 2014.
Sony has been focusing more on the streaming potential of modern smartphones of late, with Remote Play allowing you to stream PS4 and PS5 games to your mobile device.
More recently, Sony teamed up with Backbone to release the Backbone One PlayStation Edition, a special edition of the excellent Backbone One smartphone controller with its intuitive streaming-focused UI. That was an iOS-only affair, so maybe Sony has something similar planned for the Android community.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
