A larger part of the Xperia Play is its ability to play games, with Sony upselling the PlayStation Certified branding with support for PSOne Classics. The branding and support will also be a part of Sony’s S1 and S2 tablets when they release. The problem is that those classic titles aren’t selling well at all.
Sony fansite PlayStation Lifestyle took a look at the sales of the first few PSOne Classics, and the numbers aren’t pretty.
- Cool Boarders 2: 100-500
- Destruction Derby: 500-1,000
- Jumping Flash: 50-100
- MediEvil: 100-500
- Syphon Filter: 100-500
PlayStation Lifestyle spoke to Sony Ericsson head of Market Development Dominic Neil-Dwyer about the slow sales, but he remained confident about the future of the device.
“There’s only a few, at the minute, PlayStation One titles there, and there’s more coming on a regular basis, and there’s the whole PlayStation as a content provider exclusive to the device, the story about that, that will emerge and people will see,” he said.
“So, there’s no concerns, it’s a revolutionary device, it’s shaking up the market, we’re very pleased with it. In terms of getting the PlayStation Certified program out, generally, we’re very happy,” Neil-Dwyer explained. “We know there’s a lot more to come that we’re not, obviously, releasing yet. We’re releasing as we go, rather than telling everyone the full story, and I think everyone appreciates that you have a good line-up at the start of selling a device, because it is a smartphone and it has a good line-up – and that line-up will grow – and the feedback we got on that line-up is that it is a good line-up, so we’re very happy where we are.”
Oh, Sony. Only you can shake up a market with low sales. Is the Xperia Play just a slow starter, or is the product just a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none?
