Sony Ericsson Xperia Play coming in April on Orange and T-Mobile

Not ones to be left out of a party, Orange and T-Mobile -- or Everything Everywhere as they're known in their SuperMegaZord combined form -- have confirmed that they will be stocking the Sony Ericsson Xperia play gaming smart phone from April.

The Xperia Play has had more buzz than a bucket of hornets and it hasn't even been officially unveiled yet. The mobile's Super Bowl advert left us with nightmares of botched back-room surgery, but it did prompt O2 to excitedly tweet that it will be offering the PlayStation phone. Shortly after, Vodafone confirmed the same and now Orange and T-Mo are on board too.

No word yet on whether Three is planning the same, but a party wouldn't be a party without everyone there, so you would be forgiven for expecting an announcement from them soon.

We'll have to wait for the phone's first outing at Sony Ericsson's Mobile World Congress press conference on Sunday to get confirmation of its specs, but there's already been more leaks than St David's day, so expect to see the handset packing a 4-inch, 854x480-pixel screen, a 1GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. That'll make a lovely platform to enjoy those old PSOne games on with the new PlayStation Suite service.

Orange and T-Mobile will be flogging the handset this April. There's no word on pricing yet though, but keep your eyes peeled for news from Mobile World Congress to find out whether you'll need to sell one or both kidneys to afford it. Maybe the guy from the Super Bowl ad can help get them out for you.

Update: It seems the lure of the Xperia Play party was just too strong as Three has also announced that it too will be supplying the gaming phone. It's as secretive about launch dates and pricing plans as its fellow networks, but expect more concrete details to surface following MWC.