Yes, Play needs to be JEE compatible right out of the box. It needs to do that so it can be dropped into a corporate infrastructure alongside a pile of existing servlet-based legacy code. No matter how good Play or Lift or Scalatra or Typesafe Console is, there just aren't a lot of greenfield opportunities. The ability to run on a JVM and integrate well with existing
Java is a huge selling point. There needs to be a smooth migration path.