Sony shoots down plans for PlayStation phone?
updated 04:10 pm EST, Fri January 16, 2009
Sony Denies PStation Phone
Alleged sources have claimed late yesterday that Sony may have sabotaged plans for its Sony Ericsson partnership to make a PlayStation-branded phone. The electronics firm is said to have directly denied Sony Ericsson's requests in December to use the PlayStation brand and that it would only ever produce a PlayStation phone if the device was made by Sony itself. The statement is characterized as distancing Sony from its relationship with Ericsson.
Sony hasn't commented on the accusations. Sony Ericsson has also chosen not to elaborate on Sony's stance but asserts that the absence of a PlayStation phone has more to do with the quality of the experience attached to the name than any rift between Sony and its connected label.
"In the past, we have been keen that our product proposition lives up to brand promise," a spokeswoman says. "And we feel at the moment the technical specs are not high enough to put such a prestigious brand on a phone."
Sony Ericsson has readily had access to the BRAVIA TV name for Japanese phones as well as the Cyber-shot and Walkman for its international models but to date has struggled to offer a gaming-class cellphone, with its best effort being this year's motion-sensitive F305.
Sony is previously thought to have seriously considered a PlayStation phone of its own but is widely thought to have effectively conceded the gaming phone market to Apple, whose iPhone is considered more powerful than Sony's PSP game system and recently topped 500 million app downloads, a significant number of which are games.
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"Alleged sources"
Alleged sources?!?!?!? Hellloooo "Alleged" journalists at macnn. Someone who tells you something is a source, not an "Alleged source", unless you don't understand the language they're speaking and you make up the story yourself. Wait a minute, that could explain quite a few articles on macnn.