PlayStation Sony Announces the Playstation Portal; a Remote Play-oriented Handheld; 199.99 USD | 219.99 EURO | 199.99 GBP | 29,980 YEN

[Red Monster]

Yeah it is a waste. It doesn't even get that much of distance without lag. Sony released this realizing suckers would buy it.

You’re definitely interested in having a good-faith discussion about this device, aren’t you

 

[BassForever]

It would be nice if people who either have no interest in remote play devices or literally don’t understand what they’re for would just not comment on remote play devices.

I don’t have a Portal, but I do have a G Cloud, and in my experience remote play works great. It fits into my life very well. If it doesn’t fit into your life, that’s fine! But that doesn’t mean a remote play device like the Portal is a waste of money.

The portal is a waste of money even if you want/enjoy remote play like I do. You'd have to really love the ps5's controller and also not have any interest in the features most other devices at this price range can do for it to make sense.

 

[Scrawnton]

It would be nice if people who either have no interest in remote play devices or literally don’t understand what they’re for would just not comment on remote play devices.

I don’t have a Portal, but I do have a G Cloud, and in my experience remote play works great. It fits into my life very well. If it doesn’t fit into your life, that’s fine! But that doesn’t mean a remote play device like the Portal is a waste of money.

Finding out that this device performs at best the same as a cell phone running the remote play app is what's the head scratcher to me for this particular product. If Sony found a way to add some type of "secret sauce" to make this better than what other tech offers, I'd think they'd have a slam dunk product on their hands. Find a way to include a USB range extender on the PS5 so you can play in your entire house without issues instead of having to rely on your WiFi setup.

There's a world where Sony could've taken this a little bit more seriously and a first party dedicated remote play device could've been a slam dunk product, but what they released (in my opinion) is a bare bones device that is easily redundant based on it performing just like a cell phone in the best case scenario. It seems like a way to juice up fiscal revenue as opposed to a device with any sort of passion behind it.

 

[hologram]

The portal is a waste of money even if you want/enjoy remote play like I do. You'd have to really love the ps5's controller and also not have any interest in the features most other devices at this price range can do for it to make sense.

The Portal is for people who:
(a) want or enjoy remote play
(b) do not need remote play for anything other than PS5
(c) like the Dual Sense features (including ergonomics)
(d) want a large, relatively nice display

If all four of the above describe you, you can afford it, and you can find it, this device is a no-brainer. It's not a waste of money for such people.

If not, it's probably not worth getting device. For these people, it would be a waste of money. But let's not talk for others.

What I'm seeing a lot of is people for which (a) may or may not be true, and (b) through (d) are either not true or not factors, and they are simply mystified as to why the device exists. But being outside the device's niche doesn't mean the device doesn't have a niche.

 

[BassForever]

The Portal is for people who:
(a) want or enjoy remote play
(b) do not need remote play for anything other than PS5
(c) like the Dual Sense features (including ergonomics)
(d) want a large, relatively nice display

If all four of the above describe you, you can afford it, and you can find it, this device is a no-brainer. It's not a waste of money for such people.

If not, it's probably not worth getting device. For these people, it would be a waste of money. But let's not talk for others.

What I'm seeing a lot of is people for which (a) may or may not be true, and (b) through (d) are either not true or not factors, and they are simply mystified as to why the device exists. But being outside the device's niche doesn't mean the device doesn't have a niche.

So it's not worth it unless you really like the ps5 controller, which is what I said. Everything else you listed as reasons applies to several devices that can all do the same thing as the portal, and then some including the Logitech G Cloud.

 

[Red Monster]

The portal is a waste of money even if you want/enjoy remote play like I do. You'd have to really love the ps5's controller and also not have any interest in the features most other devices at this price range can do for it to make sense.

Now this I agree with, with the caveat that there actually aren’t many similar devices in this price range. The G Cloud retails at $350 (which is insane). The Steam Deck starts at $399. The ROG Ally is even more than a Steam Deck. The cheapest streaming handheld is like, the Abxylute One which goes for $229. I wish the Portal did more than it does for sure - if it could do Xbox remote play as well and emulation like the G Cloud, I would definitely pick one up. But even though it’s locked to PS5 remote play, I’d still say it’s a decent product at a good price if you’re looking for a PlayStation remote play device.

 

[Imitatio]

I'm still remotely (hah) interested in this, but both the DF video and the experiences from people online (having to mess with router settings, placement, and switching to wired connections, just to have a decent time with the Portal) have made me more skeptical at this point. I guess it would still work well enough for the games I could see myself play like that (mostly RPGs / more laid back experiences), but "working well enough" seems a bit of a let down when they're asking for more than 200€.

The fact that frame drops / artifacting and such keep reminding people that they're "only" playing a streamed version sounds like an immersion killing flaw to me, which might just be the most critical point as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: ah, and I guess my prior post on the topic also still holds true, lol

At first I was quite interested, but after a few tests with other devices with my new router and network setup, I'm definitely out. Streaming just doesn't work well enough for gaming with my infrastructure. Not even now with the new equipment. It just feels too much like a compromise for me to be willing to invest that much money. Too bad.

Had forgotten already that I did just test remote playing recently.

But hey, you can see: I've not completely given up on the idea yet, even if my circumstances are less than optimal.
I think, on paper, Sony's produced something solid certain people can get good use out of, and I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess.

 

[Red Monster]

At this point I use remote play for my consoles more often than I play them on the TV. I just got done playing TLOU part 1 for an hour with remote play on my PC. It works perfectly for me, but my PS5 is wired to my router, and so is my PC, so it honestly should work perfectly, hah.

 

[scamander]

I wish you could stream the games directly from the cloud without the need to own a PS5. There are already more games coming to the Switch I'm interested in than I can play, but nothing quite like the Playstation exclusives. Since I prefer playing on a handheld, the PS5 isn't that tempting though and buying both the PS5 and this device for a few exclusives is just too much. Truth be told, I WAS really close getting a PS5 this black friday season, because there have been some pretty good sales. In the end I didn't, because it is just so huge and I couldn't justify getting the original with the slim being released.

 

[JorgenRaft]

With how well the Portal is doing sales wise, maybe it'll make Sony start to reconsider releasing an actual handheld console.

I would just hope it wouldn't split their teams like it did before if they did ever make one again, even if the thing has to be in the Steamdeck price range to make it happen.

 

[Machrider]

The Wii U didn’t work unless you were within like, five meters of the console and there wasn’t anything in the way. The Portal will work literally anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. The Wii U and remote play devices are not comparable.

To be honest that concept could work a lot better today because they could just make the "console" like the size of two DVD cases stacked on each other or like the size of a small paperback novel, and if you put a battery in there the console itself could be easily portable and moved from room to room in a house or even thrown in a your back pack/bag and taken on the go.

And then it would be able to stream to the controller, maybe even a smartphone or tablet.

That kind of would have been a neat idea IMO. Like a 20-30 watt small sized microconsole that you can just pick and can wirelessly stream a signal to a controller screen or even phone that's within 5-10 meters would be pretty interesting.

 

[Josh5890]

With how well the Portal is doing sales wise, maybe it'll make Sony start to reconsider releasing an actual handheld console.

I would just hope it wouldn't split their teams like it did before if they did ever make one again, even if the thing has to be in the Steamdeck price range to make it happen.

A dedicated Sony handheld will never happen again. Sony isn't going to put any of their teams on handheld games when they are having a hard enough time supporting the PS5. Heck, PS Studios support of PSVR2 will be minimal at best. Sony is supporting VR by publishing third party games. Nintendo combined their teams for this exact reason. They were unable to keep supporting both console and handheld systems simultaneously.

So if Sony won't support a handheld with first party games it will come down to third party support. Well, third party studios are already supporting the Switch and eventual Switch 2. Nintendo owns the handheld market. Third parties aren't going to be incentivized to make exclusives for a handheld system that has no hook (a.k.a first party games). So if there are no PlayStation handheld exclusives, why will people buy one over a Switch, which already has an incredible library.

I would probably be interested in a new Sony handheld, but anything with its own ecosystem of games is DOA.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

so we have confirmation the device can do more than just streaming if it wasn’t so oddly restricted. (there’s only 6GB of internal storage with no way to add more, for one.)
still utterly bizarre that Sony thought it was a good idea to lock it down.