Sony finally revealed more details about its upcoming handheld, now called PlayStation Portal, but these announcements have soured my opinion on the device rather than hyped me up for it. I enjoy cloud gaming and have used a variety of services like Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, and Xbox Cloud Gaming – across my phone and even dedicated devices like the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld. Because of that, I was really excited to see what PlayStation could do as it entered the space. Unfortunately, some specific exclusions from PlayStation Portal’s functionality that make it more of a remote-play device rather than a cloud gaming handheld indicate that Sony has a fundamental misunderstanding about what people would want out of a PlayStation game streaming handheld.
Namely, the device’s positioning as primarily a “remote play dedicated device” and the exclusion of PlayStation Plus Premium cloud gaming compatibility drastically shrinks the number of reasons people should pick the device up. Cloud gaming and devices built around it have been around long enough to show that an inclusive approach to the number of services, games, and kinds of game streaming available is vital to success, and for a $200 handheld, PlayStation Portal seems like it’s excluding way too much.
Narrowing its appeal
Remote play differs from what’s more ubiquitously referred to as cloud gaming players are running the games on their own consoles rather than a third-party console or server. Still, it’s a form of streaming games over a Wi-Fi connection, typically through an app on a phone or device like the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld. That means you’ll have to stick around your own home to use the PlayStation Portal, and its game library is limited to whatever the user owns on the console. That’s limiting (it’s like if Steam Deck only ran Steam Link) but does have some use cases. Still, it doesn’t necessarily feel like it warrants a dedicated $200 device over a phone and a nice mobile controller like the Razer Kishi V2 or Backbone One – PlayStation Edition; haptic feedback and adaptive triggers only go so far.
