Sony Ericsson Officially Launches The Xperia Play "Playstation" Smartphone

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Sony Ericsson has officially launched the Xperia Play smartphone. But before everyone gets super excited and rushes to place an order, the availability is currently limited to 11 markets.

That said, the lucky 11 include the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And while some will realize that their home location is not included, Sony Ericsson did note that “further availability in an additional 6 markets over the next 2 weeks.” Sadly though, aside than a confirmation that the Xperia Play was coming to Verizon this spring, they failed to mention which other areas were going to be included in that group of six.

Moving on though, in addition to the launch of the handset, there is also word of the games. At launch Sony Ericsson is touting partnerships with more than 20 game publishers and how they will have “more than 60 games available within the first week.”

In terms of getting the games, they will be downloadable by way of the Xperia Play Launcher, which is an app that will auto-launch when you slide open the gamepad. Furthermore, the Xperia Play Launcher will both recommend games as well as allow users to search for and purchase games in the Android Market.

Otherwise, some of the games that were mentioned include Need For Speed, Gun Bros, Dungeon Defenders Second Wave, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Assassins Creed Altair’s Chronicles HD, Backstab and Works. And lastly, the pre-installed Xperia Play games will include Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior, FIFA 2010, Sims 2, Star Battalion and Tetris with Asphalt 6 coming free to download but not pre-installed.

With that, it looks like we are going to be seeing at least one more Xperia Play related press release coming from Sony Ericsson within the next two weeks. Plus, we kind of expect one of those next six to include Verizon Wireless, but until they offer something official — that is just speculation.