Rumors are circulating that Sony is planning to develop a combo gaming and cell phone device. Japanese Business daily Nikkei reported that Sony is putting together skunkworks team to develop this gadget that will marry the PlayStation Portable gaming consoles with the Sony-Ericsson mobile phone handsets.

O RLY? Can Sony take on the iPhone? Neither their Walkman or Sony Ericsson phones do that well at all in the US market. Personally, I’d like to see more Ericsson phones in the US market, I’ve had an Ericsson phone and I was really happy with it. But the general attitude towards Ericssons are “meh” at best. What could help this phone is if it gets the same all access to the PlayStation gaming network like their other handheld gaming systems. They also have to go up against the big wall of iTunes.

However, this isn’t the first time that Sony’s had designs on this kind of hybrid device. From Businessweek:

“Rumors that Sony was working on a PlayStation cell phone first cropped up two years ago when Sony’s engineers filed a patent describing such a gizmo. The Internet rumor mill went into overdrive again in April, after Kazuo Hirai, who had led Sony’s video game division, was named as the head of a broader portfolio of networked products and services. The PlayStation Network is Sony’s biggest success story in online services. Under Hirai, the PlayStation group has rolled out online downloads of music, movies, TV shows, games and created a content platform for developers to create applications and games, sell videos, and post trailers and sneak previews. It’s clearly the model that Sony wants other divisions to emulate.”

With some phones such as the LG Versa trying to capture the gamers with it’s gamepad module, we see that companies are hoping to catch gamers’ attention. We have yet to see if they will bite.

[via businessweek]

Oh Hale Yeah. Let me take a small detour from my usual mobile phone reviews. I have a confession to make: I grew up in the Street Fighter school of arcade gaming, and I probably would have become a doctor had I not spent the bulk of my college days (and nights) in the Student Union playing StreetFighter, Tekken and Samurai Showdown with my boys.
Even when I moved into my own house, I brought over my old N64 and my StreetFighter games and it’s on display next to my next-gen gaming systems.

So, how excited was I to find out that Capcom is bringing it with StreetFighter IV this year?

Total Jazz Hands and Spirit Fingers. Not only is the whole SF crew back, classic gameplay, and a limited edition SF4 joystick, it’s going to be in 3-D.

SF4 has brought the old school fight back and mixed in next-gen gaming resulting in what looks like the perfect storm. There’s lots of new stuff too, new special moves: Focus Attacks, Super Combos, and the revenge-fueled Ultra Combo system. New characters include: super spy Crimson Viper, Lucha Libre wrestler El Fuerte, and a Mixed Martial Arts fighter Abel, and a host of unlockable characters.

What is also super cool is that just like in the arcades (if you kids are old enough to remember what those were) when you are on Xbox Live, other players can pop in and challenge you to battle. I think that is genius. It really brings you back to the heyday of the fight game days.

The graphics are amazing. All the characters are bigger, beefier, and the super combos and finishing moves are stunning. The background graphics are in the 3-D perspective and the characters are fighting in 2-D just like we love.

Not to mention there is a movie about the Rise of Chun Li coming out this year too. Ok, so the Van Damme version did not set any kind of bar for quality, but Kristen Kruek plays Chun Li and the preview looked like it will be a good time, although it was suspiciously dark, so I will reserve judgement until I do a bit more poking around about this flick.

HaDuKen!