I honestly don’t get what they’re thinking. They make phones. They making gaming equipment. Why don’t they integrate those together like they did with the Xperia Play? I don’t necessarily mean taking another kick at that can (but yes, they should take another kick at that can) but why not work with what they’re good at? Like they work with Backbone to make a Playstation branded version of it – but it runs on iPhones only!
It seems so obvious - make an Xperia/PSP branded gaming-grade phone, offer a first-party Backbone-like controller, sell a Playstation Portal screen-and-wifi-only device that also docks into that Backbone-like controller, etc. The only real problem is Google’s monopolistic rules against letting hardware companies offer alternate stores on PlayStore-based devices, or they could have a Playstation Android Store focused on gamepad-based games that are specifically targeting their gaming Android devices.