Sony: Xperia Play 'not another N-Gage'

Sony has dismissed suggestions there are too many similarities between the Xperia Play and Nokia's ill-fated N-Gage.

Sony Ericsson market development head Dom Neil-Dwyer told Gamasutra why he thinks marketing a smartphone with video game buttons will work for Xperia Play despite failing with N-Gage.

"Because [N-Gage] wasn't a smartphone, and it wasn't a phone first. As you can see from the design of [the Xperia Play], when you hold it in portrait it's a smartphone.

"It's not a game device that you can make some phone calls on, it's a smartphone. When you've got the game keys hidden and you're just holding it like that, people wouldn't know what it is, but obviously when you pop it open it's a great gaming device."

Dwyer added: "The people that are going to be buying this are looking for something new. There's just a sea of touchscreen devices out there and they're looking for something cool. So that's the type of consumer that we're looking for.

"I bumped into someone here at E3 that had one and they're exactly the type of person we're targeting, which is a very cool, young person that wants something different, right? And that's basically our target audience."

Dwyer said in May he was unconcerned by low initial sales of PSone games on Xperia Play.

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