Yesterday, Vodafone New Zealand tweeted rather somberly that “the Xperia Play launch will be delayed. Major security breach. The shipment of phones has been stolen.” Following that, they posted a sketchy video of the purported theft in action, then that Vodafone “NEEDS YOU A man hunt is underway to find our stolen phones. REWARD: 6 Xperia PLAY phones and $5000 credit. Game launches on Facebook 19/05”.
The Xperia Play is Sony Ericsson’s upcoming PlayStation-certified smartphone, packing dedicated slide-out game controls, running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and launching preloaded with a variety of custom-built games. Between the 1 GHz processor, 4-inch 854 x 480 display, and usual guts like Wi-Fi b/g/n with mobile hotspot and DLNA home media sharing, GPS, 3G, and 5 megapixel camera, the Xperia Play stands to be a solid smartphone on top of being a decent portable gaming console. You can see some of our hands-on time over here.
A lot of folks are crying foul over the marketing stunt, namely the people who took the first tweet seriously, but as they say “any publicity is good publicity”. It’s hard not to be disappointed if you’ve been mislead by what would have been a great real story, but hey, at least local kiwis have a chance to win a free phone, right?
Verizon is set to put the Xperia Play on sale May 26, and given the timeline for the contest, it wouldn’t be surprising if Vodafone New Zealand launched it around the same time.
[via Engadget]