It’s official.

Sony Ericsson has officially announced the Xperia Play or for those of us following the PSP’s development, the PlayStation Phone.  In terms of pure specs, the Xperia Play is at the top of the line with CURRENT smartphones in the market (and I say current because we’re about to have a splurge of dual core smartphones) with a 4-inch multitouch 854 x 480 LCD, powered by an Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset coupled with an Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB of RAM, and 8 gigabytes of built in memory expandable through an SD card-slot.

Technical specs for the PlayStation Phone available below:

Sony-Ericsson Xperia Play
1GHz Scorpion (Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon) processor
Adreno 205 GPU
4.0? display @ 480 x 854 pixels
Touch sensitive gaming controls
PS-like gaming buttons
Multi-touch input method
400MB RAM
up to 32GB via microSD, 8GB included
HSDPA/HSUPA
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1
GPS w/ aGPS support
5MP autofocus camera w/ LED flash
Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Li-Ion 1500mAh battery

Full technical details can be found via Techie Xplorer.

Now since it’s being touted as a PlayStation Phone, then you’re probably wondering about what’s important, games.

During an interview with Famitsu, Sony Ericsson Executive Vice President and Chief Creation Officer Rikko Sakaguchi (full transcript available here), says you have multiple routes for buying games for the PlayStation Phone. You can buy from Android Market, from the carrier’s own market, or from PlayStation Store.

At launch the system will ship with Asphalt Adrenaline 6, Bruce Lee, Star Battalion, The Sims 3, Tetris preloaded,  and a unannounced, “legendary” PlayStation title alongside more than 50 additional titles from leading game publishers.  PSX/PSOne games that will be available on the Xperia Play at launch are “tweaked” to suit the phones’s screen resolution. And no, PSP games will not be supported at launch, but will be in a few months after release.

With Sony having gone the emulation route via the announcement of the PlayStation Suite service, soon your PSN-related content will be available to any Android Smartphone of your choice via the PlayStation Certification Program.  Unfortunately, if GameSpot UK’s report is to be believed, if you already have bought content on the PlayStation Store, you will need to re-purchase them so that they will be available on the Xperia Play.  :/  That sucks Sony, really.

No word on pricing on availability but Sony maintains that it will be out soon for the US followed shortly after by Japan.  The good news is that the Xperia Play will be available in CDMA and GSM configurations at the same time so carrier-capability is no longer an issue.