You're probably all familiar with the PlayStation Phone - A Sony Ericsson phone with built-in PSP functionality:

It's a cool concept - it runs Android 2.3, Gingerbread, with full slide-out DualShock-style controls, and a PlayStation app, which I assume will include a games library à la the PSP Go.

I read an article the other day (yesterday, actually) which was complaining that the PSPhone ought to not be running Android, but instead, should be running Sony's own proprietary OS, because if it ran Android, the PSP would just be an app. This really bothered me, because it sounded as if they didn't know what they were on about while also being a massive Android hate article (well, it was an Apple blog, but still). Here are some excerpts:

That last one is good because it makes it seem so ridiculous that Sony would use an existing platform on a device that such a suggestion could be mistook as a joke, while at the same time implying that the games console/android phone that is pictured right above does not actually exist.

I like how, in the second quote, they're stuck in the Apple mindset that if you don't make both the hardware and the software the device will be utterly horrible. And at the same time they're saying the app will be available on all Android devices, which is unlikely, and saying that Sony can only branch their line in one direction. It's not as if the PSP2 is not going to happen. The PSPhone is a spinoff. Apple could easily have released a WinMo or Android iPod app and still make the iPhone, and still continued making the iTouch. That would not have been a bad move, but they're control freaks at Apple and they would hate doing something like that. That's why no Apple software (except iTunes, Safari and Quicktime, essentially) is available on Windows, while OSX has the all three of the Windows equivalents available (Zune Player, IE [albeit discontinued, but that's a blessing more than anything], and Silverlight) as well as the entire Office Suite, and their Windows Live Suite, and even Windows (BootCamp).

Did it kill Microsoft that it's own OS was reduced to nothing more than an app on the Mac? No. Because that didn't happen. In the same way, the PSPhone will be running an almost unidentifiably skinned version of Android 2.3 which will be deeply integrated with PSP capabilities while also having access to the myriad of advantages that the matured and familiar platform of Android brings (such as the productivity apps, and Angry Birds).

And they're complaining that the PSP will be an app because of some video of a early alpha of the PSP games engine running on a beta build of an unreleased version of stock Android, and simply assuming that the integration stops there.

In other Sony Console related news, also involving integration, this:

See the little PS logo on the top left of the base? Yeah. The base of that TV is a PS2. This is Sony's Bravia KDL-22PX300, a 22-inch HDTV with a PS2 and DVD player glued to the bottom.

Now that is pretty awesome.

Rav