According to a post made on the Sony Mobile Blog site, the Xperia Play will be the only 2011 Xperia model to not get Android 4.0 – code named Ice Cream Sandwich.
This is in spite of the fact that they explicitly stated that all 2011 Xperia phones would get the update back in November.
Sadly, this news is most likely a direct result of test results obtained from the ICS Alpha ROM released in March.
In regards to Xperia PLAY, after extensive in house testing with our developer teams and working with our partners, we have concluded that a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed for this smartphone on Ice Cream Sandwich – therefore, we will not make the Android 4.0 upgrade available for Xperia PLAY.
It turns out that the decisions made by Sony in order to implement the built-in controller doesn’t play nice with how ICS implements the new USB controller support feature. We can only assume that it would in fact be possible to get the controller working in ICS, but it would in turn make every “Xperia Play Optimized” game no longer compatible.
I suppose they decided it would simply be better to not release ICS for the Xperia Play than have to deal the backlash. Although, going forward are developers still going to create “Xperia Play Optimized” games now that the Play will be stuck with Gingerbread?
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