On February 13, 2011, at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011, it was announced that the device would be shipping globally in March 2011, with a launch lineup of around 50 software titles.

It supports microSD cards, in contrast to the PSP consoles, which use Memory Stick variants, and the PlayStation Vita, which uses a custom, proprietary flash storage medium.

[17] During the 2007 Games Convention, Peter Ahnegard, an executive at Sony Ericsson, further fueled rumors of a PlayStation Phone, when asked about the device he said that "It's obviously something that we're looking at but right now I can't really comment".

[20] In May 2009, rumors of such a device arose once again when then head of Sony Ericsson, Hideki Komiyama, told the Financial Times in an interview that as part of his recovery plan for Sony Ericsson, he would like to combine the PlayStation brand with their phones similar to how they had created the Walkman and Cyber-shot lines of mobile phones.

[21] In June 2009, The Nikkei reported that Sony Ericsson were developing a "cellphone-game gear hybrid" as a competitor to Apple's iPhone, combining the functionality of a mobile phone and a handheld gaming device.

[22] In early 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sony was getting ready to release a smartphone able to download and play video games.

[26] On January 5, 2011, Engadget published more photos of what seems to be the final design for the device as it bears both the PlayStation and Xperia brands which weren't on the prototypes.

[1] The day after, several other clearer photos and videos of the device was leaked revealing what seems to be its final design, specs, and its benchmark score of 59.1 frames per second.

[27] On January 12, 2011, a Chinese website released pictures of what looked like the device disassembled with the parts spread out and the casing removed.

In late January or early February, a shortened version of an advert made for airing during the Super Bowl was leaked on several websites.

[40] However, on May 25, 2012, it was stated that following beta testing and discussions with developers, the Xperia Play would not receive an update to Android 4.0, citing stability concerns.