Sony might just have made the PlayStation Portal the best handheld on the market for now.
A PlayStation In The Palm Of Your Hands
When I finally was able to get my hands on a PlayStation Portal (after all the scalping madness), I was beyond excited. While a dedicated remote play accessory for $199 seemed pretty steep for what we’re getting, I held onto hope that Sony had more in store for their new accessory and surely wouldn’t abandon it as they have done with the PSVR2. Thankfully it seems Sony wasn’t giving up on the portal.
As I sat in my room playing Trails Through Daybreak on my Portal I suddenly had the thought to check out the cloud gaming library. Swapping over from remote play to the cloud beta I was greeted with the expansive albeit slightly blurry menu of games that seemed to be getting new additions each month. Scrolling through it suddenly dawned on me just how far the Portal has come from being marketed as simply a remote player to now becoming a full-fledged gaming handheld in its own right.
Now while you can technically use your PC, or iPad, or even a Steam Deck if you own one, to remotely play your games from your PS5 there is just something authentic about using the portal. It just feels right having the dedicated system for it and quite literally puts the entire power of PlayStation into a small package with the only requirement being solid internet.
Cloud Gaming Adds More Utility To The Portal
In recent years, I have found myself struggling with space management as games continue to balloon in size, determined to be the only game you play on your system. I would spend hours picking and choosing which games would stay on my system and which ones had to go. Games like Call of Duty constantly demanded 200 GB of space where I could easily slot three games for the same amount, which became a point of frustration. Thankfully, the introduction of cloud streaming helped alleviate the pressure of these larger titles by allowing me to play a lot of them directly from PlayStation servers. It also seemed like Sony finally wanted a piece of the cloud gaming pie Xbox has been trying to dominate for the last couple of years.
However, there was one issue with cloud streaming in regards to the Portal. You could not remotely play and cloud stream while doing so. So again I stuck in the loop of picking and choosing what to install on my PS5 based on what I thought I would be in the mood for while on my PS Portal. It was even more limiting for those who mainly have hard copies of their games as you are restricted to whatever game you last popped into your PS5. Despite these limitations, the Portal was sold out everywhere for nearly a year.
Late last year Sony announced that the portal was capable of cloud streaming and would be rolling out a beta service for its PS Plus Premium members that would allow us to use our Portals as a standalone system to play select games in the PlayStation catalog. It seemed Sony was looking to solve all the limitation problems at once and I must say that they have done an amazing job on that front. With the added capability of cloud gaming, players can not only remote play their PS5 titles but access the constantly expanding list of games being added to the cloud catalog. Hits like God of War Ragnorok, Tales of Arise, and DOOM Eternal have found their way on the list of almost 200 games. You can now play PlayStation exclusives without turning on your PS5 or even owning one in the first place and if you decide to stream a game you already own but may have uninstalled, your uploaded cloud save allows you to seamlessly pick up where you left off.
The Gameplay Experience
I will be the first to admit that I did not have high expectations about Sony giving remote play another go. Since its introduction with the PSP and PS3, it has been something of a mess. The PS Vita seemed to improve it a bit with the PS4 remote play, even going as far as to allow the Vita to work as a second screen for a limited number of games. However, the remote play connection was so abysmal at times being almost unusable unless you were directly in front of your console, and even then it could randomly drop the connection even with the best internet setup.
Thankfully, it seems like Sony has learned from their mistakes, and the portal handles remote gameplay near-flawlessly whether you are using remote play or cloud gaming. It also helps with space management as now you can remove any large games that are available in the cloud catalog off your console (looking at you, God of War) and have use that free space for games that don't have streaming access such as Diablo, Call of Duty, or the endless amount of 2k sports games. I mainly keep my favorite RPGS that are not stream-capable such as Elden Ring on my console making my space management a lot simpler and no longer limiting what games I have access to when using my portal away from home.
I have found myself using my portal more than my actual PS5 setup these days, especially when I want to watch a show in the background as I play. Where before the $199 price tag couldn’t be justified, I can say with full confidence now that it is worth it, even if just for cloud gaming. If you have been on the fence about acquiring one, then now is the time. I can only imagine how stacked the cloud library will be by the end of the year, with other exclusives and new games soon releasing for players to enjoy wherever and whenever they want. With more features planned for the Portal, it could become a solid contender for Nintendo's Switch 2
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