The PlayStation Portal handheld wasn’t made to make a profit but to increase play time with the PlayStation 5 console.
Speaking with Japanese publication AV Watch, Sony’s Senior Vice President of Platform Experience Hideaki Nishino revealed some interesting tidbits about the Remote Play handheld device released this week, saying that it wasn’t designed to make a profit, which doesn’t sound too surprising, considering its limited scope. The device was designed with a specific demographic in mind, allowing them to enjoy PlayStation 5 titles more by allowing them to play them while away from the actual console.
As mentioned above, the PlayStation Portal is a Remote-Play focused handheld, but things may change in the future, as there are no technical limitations that would prevent the console from supporting cloud streaming, which will be tested in the future. If implemented, cloud streaming would definitely broaden the system’s appeal considerably.
The PlayStation Portal is now available in select regions. You can learn more about the handheld by checking out Kai’s review.
The PlayStation Portal isn’t quite the portable successor that players have been asking for from Sony since the decline of the PlayStation Vita. That being said, the PlayStation Portal does one job and does it exceedingly well. It might not reinvent the remote play experience, but for those relying on controller clips to mount a phone to the top of a DualSense controller or third-party controllers that use a mobile device as the display, an official Sony product just makes sense for a unified solution. It might not replace those Backbone controllers and other devices that players might have in their home, but the PlayStation Portal might wind up being the controller that players start reaching for first.
