Xperia Play owners will have to re-buy PlayStation content

If you were excited about the Xperia Play’s ability to run classic PS One downloadable games, there’s a bit of a disappointment – you’ll have to repurchase any games that you already bought.

Sony Ericsson’s upcoming Xperia Play, known unofficially as the “Playstation Phone,” is meant to be separate from the PSP and PS3 because most of its games will be developed exclusively for the phone platform.

However, for those few that are direct ports of games already available as downloadable PSP games, you won’t be able to just re-download them on your Xperia Play.

According to Sony Ericsson UK managing director Nathan Vautier, there is connectivity between the Play and other Playstation devices, but not that much. You “will have to re-purchase the games, so it’s not totally integrated. I think the exciting thing is that there are games which people are very, very aware of,” he said in an interview with Gamespot.

When the Xperia Play launches in March, there will reportedly be 50 games available to download on the device. Many of these will not be games that were previously released on the PSP, so for the most part this won’t actually be an issue.

For those who already poured a lot of money into buying downloadable games, though, it is somewhat of a slap in the face.