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PlayStation Portal: Hands On With Sony's New Remote Play Handheld

https://inv.zzls.xyz/watch?v=7XsXNw8vZFo

The PlayStation Portal is a $200 handheld device that puts PS5 games in the palm of your hand… as long as you’re on Wi-Fi. Previously known as Project Q, Portal uses the PS5’s remote play feature to stream games from your console. Importantly, the Portal also offers all the features and ergonomics of the PS5’s excellent DualSense controller, including haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and its touchpad.

As a reminder, the PlayStation Portal, or Project Q, is (according to leaks) based on Android. It doesn't run the games itself, it merely streams them from your PS5 and your handheld then serves as a controller with its own display.

I'm wondering why anyone would prefer that over simply using a regular Android phone with a good controller and the PS Remote Play app?

37 comments

inclementimmigrant

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Let's not forget that this piece of e-waste doesn't even have Bluetooth support and you have to buy a proprietary set of headphones or earbuds that cost as much as the piece e-waste.

ColeSloth

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Standard Bluetooth latency sucks, and would doubly suck having to stream the audio-video to the handheld and then Bluetooth it to the headphones. That's why high end wireless gaming headsets game with a 2.4ghz dongle instead of using bt.

The thing has an audio jack. You could literally buy wired headphones/earbuds from the damned dollar store if you don't already have a pair lying around and then have 0 latency. It would be dumb to use anything for a handheld like this besides wired headphones.

inclementimmigrant

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There are low latency codex for BT that work well and if you're streaming anyways, audio latency is the least of your concerns, like you've stated.

I just think that creating a "portable gaming handheld" without the option for Bluetooth is a crappy decision to not give gamers the option. The steam deck offers it, the variants offer it, hell even the switch offers it now.

I also think it's even a worse slap in the face for PlayStation fans with Sony's decision to make it so it's not compatible with it's current wireless PS5 headset and instead making their fans buy another set of headphones that cost nearly as much as their dumb terminal.

zikk_transport2

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Hazdaz

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What a beautifully pointless device. The design of the device is legitimately futuristic, but other than that this is a device that is bound to fail. It's a "what were they thinking?" kind of product.

Here's what I hope: Sony cancels this device next year when no one buys it for Christmas this year. They clearance them all out for $100 and at that point the hacker/DIY community notices that the controller and screen and other components are worth way more than $100 so someone develops some kind of $50 add on that let's you actually run software on it directly (bypassing the stupid streaming BS). Basically turning it into a fancy Android handheld.

For those who might think that is far fetched, just remember what happened with the HP Touchpad all those years ago.

Meloku

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This is exactly what I'm hoping for. This looks like a kickass emulation device once it's jailbroken.

Hazdaz

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Exactly. The big issue is the fact that it doesn't technically do any processing on-device and simply does streaming. So if this ever gets jailbroken, it will need to involve more than just software since you'd need something with a reasonably fast CPU to run that software.

I'm excited to see this product fail!

CosmicSploogeDrizzle

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Adding moonlight support for PC streaming would be cool. And for $100 I would buy this just for shits.

Meloku

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For the device to do anything near 1080p with as little latency as possible, the device MUST have a dedicated graphics chip, probably Mediatek or, hopefully, Snapdragon. Also hopefully, it might have some kind of on-board storage, at least for AndroidOS + updates, hopefully a MicroSD port for media sharing. With all of this in place, turning a stream-only device into a regular Android one is pretty much trivial.

Kbobabob

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I think you mean rooted. It's Android based.

Meloku

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"rooted" and "jailbreak" are exactly the same procedure: obtain root access to low level hardware. The only difference is Apple fans trying to be different.

Kbobabob

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I know they do the same thing, lol. But I've never heard someone say they're going to jailbreak their Android. It's just semantics.

sparky

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They even mean the same thing technically! The “jail” specifically refers to a jailed shell, as BSD jail, so both jailbreaking and rooting (as in Unix root) both quite literally mean the same thing, privilege escalation.

TurnItOff_OnAgain

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I got the TouchPad on its fire sale. Amazing tablet. WebOS wasn't exactly terrible on it, but Android was killer. Kept it for many years after.

Hazdaz

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WebOS was awesome. It was more slick all those years ago than Android is now.

wizardbeard

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I'm wondering why anyone would prefer that over simply using a regular Android phone with a good controller and the PS Remote Play app?

To expand on this, if you already have an android phone and any console controller with a usb port on it, you can just order a phone mount for the controller and a cheap adapter cable. Then you have PS remote play, xbox's game streaming, moonlight PC streaming, steam streaming, any emulator that runs on android (most halfway recent phones can do all consoles pre-ps2, and higher grade phones can even do some PS2 and Switch games), a good bunch of sourceports of old games to android, and a decent handful of android games that have controller support.

That's far more functionality for far cheaper. Been enough to satisfy my desires for a steam deck too, as I only miss out on PC games when I'm traveling, and there's plenty to emulate to keep me busy.

Really confused at who at Sony sees any profit potential here, unless they're just doing this to burn through really old android phone cpus and screens they have a surplus of.

ColeSloth

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I have a steam deck and I've used controllers with phone mounts. Even though the overall weight of the SD if much more, it it way more comfortable to play for a long time because the weight is between your hands and not top heavy. Also, your phone is smaller than an 8" screen.

As to who it's for? Every kid/teen who'd like to play ps5 from their room sometimes, even though the ps5 is set up in the family room. Every time it's the little brother/sisters turn to have the TV and they want to watch frozen for the 47th time. When your spouse wants to binge watch more of their show on Netflix and you still want to hang out in the same room. When mom or dad want to play GTA 5 without the 7 year old see you beat a hooker with a baseball bat. When you're sick in bed and still want to game. When you have an addiction and don't even want to stop playing when you go to take a shit (ew).

No, this isn't a product for everyone. This is a product for families and couples. And really, it's not a whole lot of money by today's standards. It's $200 and there's a $70 controller strapped to it. So an extra $130 gets you a screen bigger than your phones in a more comfortable spot for a screen and a battery pack.

Seems like everyone's batching about it not doing things a switch or steam deck would do, when it's not trying to be a switch or steamdeck. It just wants to let you play games anywhere in your house without causing problems with anyone else that lives with you.

If I had a PS5 and no steam deck, I'd want one. Half the time I use my steam deck is at home because I want to play some games from a different area of my house.

dingus

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Can't you get a happy medium with a split, side mounted controller for your phone then? Would be cheaper than the steam deck, but better for ergonomics than a phone clip to a regular controller.

ColeSloth

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Ergonomics wise, but can you have those where it can charge it at the same time, do you want to wear out your $1000 cell phone battery, and I doubt any of those controllers work as nicely as a ps5 controller. Plus the screen is smaller and you won't have a lag free audio jack.

Plus the good ones that you attach to phones are already $100. At that point I'd rather spend an extra $100 to have something better, bigger, and dedicated?

dingus

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Yeah there's a lot of give and take I suppose. There's also an advantage to the split controller attachment model in that it's more portable than a giant honking Steam deck tho I suppose.

finickydesert

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They got rid of the vita for this?!

Defaced

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I don't really see the point of this thing, the steam deck would be a better investment. If this was in some way a stepping stone to a dedicated handheld then awesome, but give me the dedicated handheld.

CosmicSploogeDrizzle

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If this was PS5/PS4 streaming but with the ability to play PS3/2/1 games locally, it would kill for $200. And they wouldn't fracture the PS5 development base, which they are obviously afraid of doing.

Hell, even some modern indie games that don't use the full PS5 horsepower could have potentially make a PSPortal version for on-the-go gaming.

Davel23

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Should have been called the PSPiiU.

Kbobabob

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Should just be called POS

cyberpunk007

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This gets a huge meh from me. It's a wannabe switch/steam deck that's basically good enough in most cases for someone that will likely be in front of their ps5 to use it effectively anyway, given that most homes don't have adequate wifi coverage for high throughput. And relying on home internet upload speeds it a whole other caveat. Still relies on a cloud service, so once Sony decides to shut that down then it's 100% e-waste.

No thanks.

RxBrad

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Brunbrun6766

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Forgetting the key feature, it must be on the same Wi-Fi network as your ps5 in order to stream your games

Edit: I see that I'm mistaken, this was info from when it was first announced, must have been changed since then

hellfroze

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In the video it's stated it can be on any wifi network. Since he was sitting at PlayStation HQ, getting official info directly from Sony, I'm gonna go with what he said.

cyberpunk007

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This. And when Sony shuts down that service that makes this work one day, it's a brick.

Kbobabob

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Where do you see this?

mee

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Bigger screen than a regular android phone. Especially because your 6" 21:9 phone means a 16:9 picture on it will only take up ~5".

Also better controller. Those mounts for a phone on a regular Xbox/Playstation controller always make it too top-heavy since your phone has to be on top of the controller. And I love the idea of a full-sized controller over a Switch or even Steam Deck's tiny buttons that just aren't comfortable.

I'd probably only be interested if it lets you run actual Android stuff though. Have you seen the Logitech G Cloud gaming handheld? That one's even more expensive, but it does run local games too.

why anyone would prefer that over simply using a regular Android phone with a good controller

I always think this is funny because that sums up /r/sbcgaming

superb

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It’s be nice if they didn’t choose to go with Android

cyberpunk007

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Why?

superb

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It’s not the right choice for purpose built handhelds or performance sensitive devices like this. You’ll end up with a half baked android skin and terrible latency issues. If you want to make a good product, you’re much better off building you’re own OS on top of Linux. The remarkable tablets are living proof of this

regalia

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Android is an OS on top of Linux lol, and none of what you said is true.

superb

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Yes I know what Android is lol. My point is that Android is too bloated for purpose built product like this. Your better off doing it yourself and building only what need.

cyberpunk007

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Well, I'm sure it's good enough by the time they slap their own drivers in there. It's just streaming. I'd imagine literal wifi being the bigger culprit of any slowness. And android is already there so it's easier to build off that than make your own thing, especially when it's doomed to fail anyway 😂

superb

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It’s a lot easier to build a bespoke OS than you think! Sony could definitely do it if they cared enough. It’s just one of many reasons it’s doomed to fail lol