Sony PlayStation Tablet Faces Rough Road Ahead

From PC World: Sony CEO Howard Stringer and Bloomberg have confirmed that the Android-powered PlayStation gaming tablet is real, and coming sometime before the end of 2011. However, with the company's wobbly financial record, product delays, and the incredibly tough competition it faces from the Nintendo 3DS and Apple's iPad, Sony is going to have a hard time selling these tablets.

Not to say that the hardware itself doesn't sound promising. If Stringer is referencing the "S1" that was rumored in February, the tablet may pack an Android 3.0 Honeycomb punch; have a 9.4-inch screen with a 1280-by-800 pixel display; an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor; front and rear cameras; USB and infrared ports; built-in support for Sony's music service, Qriocity; preloaded Sony PS One games; and a price tag of $600.

The PS tablet will also use the PlayStation Suite, an online service selling original PlayStation games. Rumors of support for PSP and PlayStation 2 games have been dismissed as unsubstantiated -- which doesn't sound so neat. How long will Sony milk its 16-year-old console?

Speaking of old consoles, Sony didn't start making a profit off PlayStation 3 sales until June 2010 -- almost four years after the console's November 2006 launch. "[2010] is the first time that we are able to cover the cost of the PlayStation 3," Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide Studios, told IGN. "We aren't making huge money from hardware, but we aren't bleeding like we used to."

Sony is also having a tough time juggling its many projects. First there's the impending release of its PSP successor, the "Next Generation Portable," which sounds great on paper. And then there's Sony's other pet project, The Xperia Play (or the PlayStation phone), which was released earlier this month -- but not in the United States. The Android-powered phone video game gizmo is now expected sometime in mid-April.

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