At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday, Sony Ericsson finally made an official announcement about its ‘PlayStation Phone’ which will formally be called the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.

Even though the company refrained from disclosing the cost of the handset, it did say that the device will hit the US market in spring this year and will be available on the Verizon Wireless network.

Going by the details released by Sony Ericsson at the MWC, some of the notable features of the Xperia Play – the first PlayStation Certified smartphone – include a 4-inch multi-touch display; Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor with a 1 GHz CPU; a 5.0 megapixel camera; and an embedded Adreno GPU graphics processor to ensure smooth 60 frames per second gameplay video.

The Xperia Play will run 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’ version of the increasingly-popular Google Android operating system; and will boast a slide-out game pad, with two analog touch pads, and two shoulder buttons. In addition, it will also have a digital D pad and an area with the four PlayStation icons that comprise buttons with a circle, square triangle, and a cross.

With the Xperia Play likely to have over 50 games – including Need For Speed, Sims 3, Guitar Hero, Assassin's Creed, FIFA 10, and Splinter Cell - available at launch, Sony Ericsson marketing chief Steve Walker said that the handset finally realizes “the dream of high-quality mobile gaming.”