Earlier this year, Sony announced that the Xperia lineup of android smartphones, released in 2011 and 2012, will get the latest taste of Ice Cream Sandwich. However, in a shocking announcement, Sony removed the PlayStation phone - Xperia Play - from Android 4.0 ICS update list.

In a blog post on Friday, Sony confirmed that the Android 4.0 ICS update for Xperia Play has been axed due to gaming stability issues. The manufacture said that Android 4.0 ICS is more powerful and resource intensive. As a result applications requires powerful CPU, more RAM and network bandwidth. Developers and testers faced a significant decline in performance when running graphic intensive games and so the ICS update for Xperia Play is not recommended.

"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," said Sony on its official Xperia product blog.

Sony cancelled the update after receiving negative feedback from testers and developers regarding the beta build of Android 4.0 ICS for unlocked Xperia Play, which was rolled out earlier as a test platform prior to official update release.

"This decision was also verified when we received similar feedback from the developer community; both experienced developers and advanced users, along with game content providers following our ICS beta ROM for unlocked Xperia PLAY smartphones," said Sony, justifying the update cancellation for Xperia Play.

"Our priority has and always will be, to provide the best possible user experience on Xperia smartphones. In this instance the ICS upgrade would have compromised stability, where we look to ensure a quality gaming experience with games optimized and developed for Xperia PLAY."

This is surely a bad news for Android gamers, especially for proud owners of the PlayStation smartphone. However, the company is not avoiding ICS update for other devices. Sony Xperia Ray, Xperia Arc S and Xperia Neo V just got ICS update last month.

On the other hand, ICS update for Xperia Arc, Xperia Neo, Xperia Mini, Xperia Mini Pro, Xperia Pro, Xperia Active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman will start rolling out next week. After it, the new NXT series smartphones - Xperia S, Xperia P and Xperia U - are next in the update list.