Was this really all Sony has to offer for the Portal? The PlayStation Portal was officially unveiled by Sony at Gamescom and despite having a lot of hype and anticipation around it, the Portal is kind of a bland product.
At least it’s not too expensive…if it actually had games to play on it.
The PlayStation Portal was finally unveiled by Sony to a rather small selection of developers and studio heads at Gamescom (the online audience was obviously far bigger) a few days ago, and the new handheld gaming device really doesn’t look all that interesting. But, to be honest, I don’t know if anyone should have hoped otherwise.
Okay, for those who didn’t watch Gamescom or see the presentation online (1.4M of you guys did), Sony and the heads of PlayStation at long last decided it was time to officially announce the true scope of Project “X”, which I don’t believe was named by Elon Musk but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was, to be the new PlayStation Vita!!!
What’s that? It’s not? Okay, scratch that. I guess it’s not the Vita despite looking almost identical to it and the Nintendo Switch as it’s actually the brand-new PlayStation Portal, which is a hand-held gaming console that can stream any and all PS5 games one has downloaded on their consoles.
So, if you’re travelling to Pakistan for whatever reason and need to play some God of War: Ragnarök to tide you over, then you can just whip out your PlayStation Portal and go hog wild with Kratos and Freya on the plane.
That may have come off a little more…well…gratuitous than I intended, but that’s the whole gist of the PlayStation Portal. It’s a an 8-inch, 1080p 60 Hz screen attached to two mini halves of a PlayStation controller on either side of it, while you can ONLY PLAY GAMES DIRECTLY RUNNING ON YOUR PLAYSTATION 5.
You can’t buy different cloud-streaming games from the PS family of titles (because Sony doesn’t even offer cloud-streaming on mobile devices), you can’t buy other titles from different publishers/studios not already on your PS5, and you are forced to run your console remotely to even use the device as the mobile console runs SOLELY through your PS5.
And that’s about it.
As I just pointed out, there’s no new features, different graphical settings for 99% of all games (there is a touch-screen compatibility setting for games that feature touch-screen modes, but that’s very few and far between), you can’t buy games solely for one console, and the things doesn’t even support regular Bluetooth connectivity but rather its own specialized version of Bluetooth for headphones, accessories, etc. (which you have to buy as well, obviously).
To be honest, there’s very little separating this device from PlayStation’s own PS5 Remote play as you could just use your iPhone, Android, tablet, etc. to play games through Remote Play. I guess this offers a better screen and the Dual Sense controller to help you play, but, in my opinion, it’s pretty much a poor knockoff of the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation Vita.
And, to charge $200 for this thing might be the funniest and lamest feature it has going as I just pointed out how it’s INFERIOR to nearly all other mobile device consoles, its companies own PS5 Remote Play feature, and can barely stand up to the over decade-old PlayStation Vita.
I’d skip out on this device if I was you guys.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Image Creator: Sony/Image Source: IGN) (PlayStation Portal: Hands On With Sony’s New Remote Play Handheld – YouTube)
