Sony Ericsson's Tim Harrison

On where the Xperia Play stands now, and where he hopes it's heading

Feature by Dan Pearson Contributor

Published on Aug. 23, 2011

GamesIndustry.bizPrior to and during Gamescom there were a few opinions voiced about the Vita, saying that a dedicated handheld is an outdated concept because game-capable smartphones have cannibalised that market. Do you have any agreements with Sony over where your respective remits begin and end?

Tim Harrison

I don't know whether it's formal or not - this is primarily a smartphone, we're not trying to pretend otherwise. It's always been positioned and marketed as a smartphone that does great gaming. It's not a handheld portable gaming console - we believe that they are different markets and that there's room for both in the market.

A mad keen crazy gamer will buy every device under the sun, but this is very firmly positioned as a smartphone with a gaming optimised control pad. Smartphone gaming has seen a massive surge of growth in the last two or three years, especially on Android in the past year - what we're trying to do is position ourselves as part of that, but because we have a Sony heritage, because we have a PlayStation certified device, because we have the access to PlayStation classic games, and by the end of the year full access to the PlayStation store, this is very much a smartphone that has access to the gaming audience as well. So we see them very much as distinctive devices.

GamesIndustry.bizHow are you going to deal with reviews and positioning on the marketplace? Will it be lead by user-generated reviews, or be a more curated experience?

Tim Harrison

It's going to evolve over time. The Android market fulfills a very valuable function in terms of distribution and user comments, in terms of rating content according to popularity, we're not necessarily trying to duplicate any of that, we're trying to generate additional layers that allow people to see either stuff that's been curated by the team or stuff that's been picked up by our launcher, we can obviously tell through our launcher which games are being interacted with the most, so again we're using that as a mechanism.

We're just trying to add that extra layer of value and discoverability on top of what's all ready available through Android. The reaction we have from our operator customers has been very positive, as well as from our publishing partners. This phone does drive significantly higher levels of discoverability and higher levels of ARPU (Average revenue per user) because of its discoverability of content and the premium nature of that experience.

GamesIndustry.bizYou seem like you're building up to something of a second push, you've got a wider catalogue of games lined up now. Was that always the plan - to have a sort of half-soft launch which you then augmented at a later date?

Tim Harrison

I think you always find with any console that you have an initial launch catalogue and then as the device and the technology are embraced by the development community you start to build on that. But obviously we're entering the pre-Christmas sales season now and we wanted to ensure that we had a nice strong catalogue coming fresh to the table around this time, so the strategy has always been around a slow build, a continual build.

It's still quite early days, but we're very pleased about where we are with the content selection.

GamesIndustry.bizSmartphone models tend to be iterated very quickly - is that something we'll see with the Xperia Play?

Tim Harrison

I think it's always a balance between managing the lifecycle of the hardware and the lifecycle of the consumer, with any consumer device. I hope we've made it clear with the Xperia Play that Sony Ericsson is going to have gaming very much as an increasingly core part of its content strategy going forwards. I joined the team relatively recently to help drive that forwards, particularly for play but also across the board for smartphones.

Obviously we're focusing on the Play today, but they'll be exciting stuff coming up which we'll announce in due course.

GamesIndustry.bizThe biggest recent news in the sector has been Google's acquisition of Motorolla. Do you think that was motivated by a desire to deal with platform fragmentation head on? Will we see a Google constructed phone?

Tim Harrison

I think what we need to focus on there is the other side of the deal. I think what we're focused on is the patent side of the deal. Patents are an increasingly challenging part of doing business in mobile and device development. In many ways, by securing the patents that they have through their deal, in many ways they've made Android stronger, perhaps less prone to challenges from other segments in the industry.

We don't see it changing things. We're still 100 per cent committed to Android. We think it's an open eco-system that works well for us and it's absolutely where we're going to keep our focus for the time being.

GamesIndustry.bizWhat about pricing models? With in-app purchases seemingly the best way to make money on mobile right now, are you going to be able to add that option to PS Classics?

Tim Harrison

You'd need to talk to Sony about pricing models on the store, that's not something we can share at this point. In terms of where we are now, we've got a selection of different pricing models and prices - we've got free stuff in there. If you look at the launcher, we've got content which is €5 or €6, we've got stuff that's free.

This is a device that's built on an Android smartphone platform. We believe it offers a significantly enhanced version of that because of the physical controls and the discoverability and the additional opportunities that offers.

The demographic for games is much wider than it's ever been, and because of that broadening you need a wide range of prices and pricing models. As far as we're concerned we're very supportive of whatever the developer feels the best way to monetise their content is.