I am now the proud owner of a PlayStation Portal. Much like the PS5 Pro, I went through this brief period of buyer’s remorse over whether I’d wasted yet more money on hardware I would never use. But it has already become a regular part of my gaming routine, charging away on the TV cabinet as it waits to be picked up when someone else in the house is eager to watch or play something in the living room.
The Portal offers a compelling solution to enthusiast gamers like myself who play enough to warrant a handheld whose only reason to exist is to offer an inferior level of visuals and performance to the console they already own, a performance that is scuppered further by a reliance on ultra-fast internet speeds to bring that experience to life in the first place. That’s a lot of variables, but despite some teething issues, I’m starting to vibe with the Portal in ways I never expected to. It’s not going to replace my Nintendo Switch or my Steam Deck, but after a couple of weeks with it, I don’t think it ever intended to.
The PlayStation Portal Isn’t Trying To Be The Nintendo Switch
When Sony introduced cloud streaming to the PlayStation Portal – albeit currently in a limited beta form – it changed the conversation around it. No longer was this a glorified device made for Remote Play and nothing more, it was a potential means to access my entire library. You would need a pretty good internet connection to make this possible, but suddenly I didn’t need the PS5 to be switched on for it to function. Sony cut out the middle man and turned it into a handheld worth owning. It still comes with plenty of baggage, but now I can see it having a future. While no Vita 2, it could get pretty close if things go well.
Sony recently confirmed that Portal has sold two million units, so I’m not the only one keen to take their PS5 gaming on the move. Or, at the very least, into another room.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I never gravitate towards triple-A blockbusters on the Portal. It only outputs at 1080p and 60 frames per second, and even then you are bound to bump into streaming artefacts and latency that harm the experience. So when it comes to big titles like Horizon Forbidden West, Star Wars Outlaws, or Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I would rather opt for the real deal instead of a smaller device not built for them.
Instead, I’ve come to view it as built to serve a different purpose. To hold up smaller titles or less demanding indies, I haven’t found time for previously. Games that I know will come to life on the Portal and not be held back by its unique circumstances. When I started to approach it from that perspective and shift my gaming habits, it felt incredible.
But It Is Never Trying To Be Like The Steam Deck
Weirdly enough, the game I’ve played most on Portal is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Final Bar Line. A rhythm game I adore, and one that translates beautifully to a small screen and all the bite-sized gameplay sessions we tend to associate with handhelds. I can play songs and make some serious progress away from the television before jumping into something entirely differen.
Indies like Fear the Spotlight, Balatro, Nine Sols, Potionomics, and more are now receiving more attention than ever before thanks to the hardware they are used on. There is probably something psychological going on that’s shifting my perspective like this, but if it’s broadening my horizons (even if I’m not playing Horizon), that can only be a good thing.
It has also become a great excuse to replay older JRPGs or delve into ones I never got around to at the time. Chipping away at a behemoth while tucked away in bed just hits differently.
There is no sign of Sony creating a dedicated handheld outside the Portal, but what it is showing signs of is developing it into something more. Cloud streaming is transformative if executed correctly, while the user interface is ripe for improvements that bring it beyond the current level of functionality it occupies. I’ve had a lot of people on the fence about picking up a Portal and whether it would work for them over the Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. It will never fill the same void, but it is capable of doing something else, and that’s well worth keeping an eye on.
PlayStation Portal
The PlayStation Portal is a handheld companion to Sony’s PlayStation 5 console. Based around the features of a DualSense controller and Remote Play, it features an eight-inch LCD screen at 1080p resolution capable of 60fps, a headphone jack for wired audio.