Have you guys every seen one of these?

This is the Sony Ericsson XPERIA PLAY which some people dubbed it the "PlayStation Phone."  It was my first touchscreen smartphone, and the irony is that I hardly used it as a gaming device.  It was primarily a phone and mp3 player, and I also used it at work for calculations via apps.  It was a pretty slick piece of novelty hardware, but the biggest downside to this phone was that it's gaming features prevented updates from Android 3.0 and up.  At least that was to my understanding since it had the compatible hardware from a smartphone standpoint alone.  Also, the pre-installed bloatware was uninstallable.  They mainly came in the form of free games, but I don't care for Madden, but I cannot delete it to make room for more apps.  I replaced eventually replaced the XPERIA PLAY with a Samsung Galazy S2 and didn't look back.

Yup, my first Android and fourth Sony Ericsson phone.

I liked the Bruce Lee game it brought for a while and finished it but never played any other game from the Playstation Store. The flat analog buttons was a good idea but only worked with games exclusively made for the phone other than that it was useless. It was also lacking in specs and updates didn't improve anything. I did play lots of retro games on emulators the screen and buttons are perfect for emulators!

After 2 years i got a black screen and trying to repair the phone was pretty much impossible since its such an obscure phone retailers would send me to buy a new one. I decided to never buy Sony again and went with a Galaxy Note 4, still happy with it and never looked back.

Overal Xperia Play is a crappy phone.

This phone is (one of) the reason(s) that I know a vita phone would fail hard for them.

Or just look at NGage.  Then again, don't.

Right? 😜

It's not like Vita didn't fail hard as well. 

You just don't make a device like that without complete commitment to your vision. Not to mention, that Xperia Play made its attempt way too early, mobile chips and screens were too weak and consumed too much power. The story is different now. 

I want to believe Nintendo's Switch controllers can be hooked to any smartphone wirelessly, billions of smartphone and lots of games available to play, but BUTTONS can bring in the traditional gamers and widen the gaming audience on smartphones. 

I didn't own one so I can't speak to its quality, but the only advantage to this thing is that it would be perfect for emulators.

My friend had one. Seemed interesting but never did try it out.

It's not just technology and interface that holds phone games back. It's the economics more than either of those factors. Phone game developers and their customers have established "free" (quotes are added because even Apple won't use the word "free" any more so as not to risk being accused of false advertising, those apps simply say "Get") as the price point on mobile. Any price increase at all above "free" causes the audience to shrink exponentially. And the "freemium" model is generally to make the game so gimped and boring that you want to pay to make the game good (or more ridiculously, you're paying NOT to play the game since the freemium crap generally allows you to bypass the grindy stuff needed to get anything decent in a phone game).  So that ensures that phone games will by and large be low-quality swipe-and-tap Skinner boxes. That audience generally isn't interested in gaming beyond that, and they don't really care about buttons whether they're built into the device or whether it's a controller that snaps onto the phone. There really isn't much crossover in that market.

The Xperia Play sucked while the Vita is a low-selling handheld with a lot of great games on it. But let's not kid ourselves that the Xperia Play would have been any hotter of an item if it had the gaming HP of a Vita, nor that the Vita would have been likewise any bigger of a success as a smartphone.