EDGE is reporting on an interesting turn regarding Sony Ericsson"s Xperia Play device - it doesn"t seem to be shifting games.
Having been on the market since April 1st, the top selling PSOne Classic title has been Destruction Derby, yet that has managed to achieve sales of only around 500 - 1000 units. Other titles, such as Medievil and Syphon Filter have barely been able to shift 500 units.
The Xperia Play has still yet to launch on all major carriers. O2 delayed the launch of the device due to what O2 described as "numerous bugs", but has promised to launch the device by the beginning of June. Speaking from their blog, the head of O2"s testing team, Stuart Hibberd had this to say -
As you may have seen, we’ve been extensively testing the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY over the last few months to make sure it’ll give our customers a great experience when they use it. I’m happy to say that the end is now in sight and we’re planning to put the Xperia PLAY on sale at the start of June.
Despite the slow game Sales, Sony Ericsson don"t seem too bothered. Dominic Neil-Dwyer, SE"s head of market development, said in a recent interview with Playstation Lifestyle that he feels the issue is simply down to awareness amongst consumers and that as more titles become available and the market matures, sales will pick up.
I think there’s also an awareness thing for people that are getting their hands on the device and where they are choosing to purchase games. 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.
It"s important to keep in mind that as these titles are sold through the Android market, they are not in any way affected by the PSN downtime. Sony also has a couple of Playstation-certified tablets coming out soon, which should also boost sales.