After giving players a sneak peek earlier this year under the codename Project Q, Sony has now officially pulled back the curtain on its portable PlayStation 5 device of sorts. The PlayStation Portal remote player will stream PS5 games over the wireless network, utilising its eight-inch LCD screen to display games in 1080p and at 60 FPS.
Priced at US$199.99, it is perhaps a surprising price, but a deeper look at what it can do may suggest why the gaming giant went with the price point.
“PlayStation Portal will connect remotely to your PS5 over Wi-Fi, so you’ll be able to swiftly jump from playing on your PS5 to your PlayStation Portal,” said Hideaki Nishino, Senior Vice President of platform experience at Sony Interactive Entertainment, in the blog post. “PlayStation Portal can play supported games that are installed on your PS5 console and use the Dualsense controller.”
What it won’t do is stream games over the cloud, which some may have expected to be the best function of a device like the PlayStation Portal. “Games that must be streamed on PS5 using a PS Plus Premium membership are not compatible,” says Sony. A connection of at least 5Mbps, with a recommended speed of 15Mbps, will suffice.
The device itself will have controllers on the sides, which resemble the DualSense controllers, with both adaptive triggers and haptic feedback present, so the gaming experience will be somewhat alike. Players can also use the PlayStation Portal to watch media, as long as they have that all-important WiFi connection.
As for audio, the PlayStation Portal won’t have Bluetooth functionality, so those Sony Pulse 3D headsets that players may have are not going to work. Instead, it uses the new PlayStation Link wireless technology which is supposed to deliver low latency, lossless audio. As such, the company also announced both the Pulse Elite wireless headset and Pulse Explore wireless earbuds that will support PlayStation Link, or you can just stick to the good old 3.5mm headphone jack.
There are still some details that are unknown about the PlayStation Portal, such as its battery life or latency, but that will likely be explained in detail leading up to launch. There is still no release date set yet for the device.
Jake is a full-time trophy hunter and achievement gatherer on consoles, and part-time Steam Sale victim. He has a thing for Batman and awesome statues, and running out of space for both. Send help.
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