Let’s see if they learned anything after getting trounced by a ridiculous gadget with two screens. I am betting: no.
So in all likelihood it’s going to be a new platform that runs new versions of the same shit you can already buy, forcing developers to target yet another generic computer behind a proprietary and paranoid interface, plus the occasional “exclusive” funded solely to keep pretending consoles exist. Desperately continuing the business model from the PS2 era, an uncomfortable number of years ago. Pretending every game for their brand is made for their brand, or else it was a port from somewhere else. But most games aren’t ports, anymore. They’re just games. They’re on everything. Because hey guess what: you sell a generic computer. You sell damn near the same generic computer as the other guys. You even strangled all chance of staggered launches creating ‘buy now or wait for better hardware’ dynamics, by doing “pro” versions, mid-generation.
That should be fantastic for handhelds. Nintendo knew it, and added their toy-company silliness to a generic Android thing, and absolutely printed money. Again. Valve knew it, and after a failed effort to be Android that was more like being 3DO, turned a niche class of ‘well that’s neat’ gizmo into a completely viable gaming PC the size of a long brick. Delightful internet weirdos are trying to marry the two concepts with userland emulation, so your phone can run Elden Ring. Or at least Pizza Tower.
And into that environment, I fully expect Sony to trip over their own dick and try to sell you yet another offensively incompatible Memory Stick format, for a machine that claims to have “solved” the convenience and immediacy of Switch cartridges, to play archaic remixes of whole-ass games that system got a year earlier. Buoyed, of course, by the strength of their first-party library… versus Nintendo.
As someone who owns a Vita, and loves it. This needs to be one of two things.
A Steam Deck Clone with access to Steam, that way when they abandon it, I can still play newer games, even if they’re indis
Backwards Compatible with PS4 games, that way they have a software library and I don’t need to worry about games.
Otherwise, this device will be all digital, with a proprietary OS, locked down box which will be abandoned in 2 years unless it can somehow eclipse the Steam Deck in sales.
If Sony releases a new handheld, it won’t have your point 1. Sony just won’t allow it.
It would be nice to have backward compatibility with PS4 games though, but I don’t think Sony is currently releasing enough games that they can split them into 2 separate devices.
Steam Deck shows you can definitely do PS4 level gaming in a portable.
And the PS4 has a decent back catalog.
Just not sure the market is there for people to want to play a bunch of stuff they’ve already played, but on the go. And I’m not sure they’re ready to be abandoned again after the PSP and Vita failed to really live up to expectations.
I just can’t see it working for them. Nintendo are plain better at this, don’t have a main product to fall back to when it fails to take off.
The hardware was fine (apart from my Vita which would throw errors about the SIM card slot all the time). But they didn’t immediately displace Nintendo DS or 3DS, so Sony weren’t really interested in keeping them alive.
If this thing can’t even play PS4 games, it’s dead on arrival. Having launch access to a huge back catalogue is the only thing that could make it interesting. Even then, a lot of the best PS4 games already launched on PC. How are they going to differentiate themselves from the Steam Deck?
Handhelds exist right now that can play the PS5 pc ports of games pretty well, they’re just not that cheap. Sure, Sony could have had a handheld that plays PS4 games natively, but it probably would have cost more than the PS5 and with a terrible battery life.
Whenever Sony launches a PS6, I imagine PS4/5 capable mobile chips will be cheap enough for Sony to sell a handheld at the same price if not less than their home console. Then you can just use streaming to play PS5 Pro or PS6 games (and beyond) remotely.
I believe we got the portal as a stop-gap to discourage users from just buying steam decks (which I did) and migrating to steam, but I think a dedicated Sony handheld, with all its haptics and build quality, would be a hell of a device for people with an extensive PS library such as myself to own. I bought my deck (and will keep it) to play retro treasures that aren’t easily available on console, but would more than likely buy a new Sony handheld over a Deck 2 in the future.
Third time's the charm, I guess? I'd at least be interested to see what this ends up looking like, given just how different the handheld gaming space is now compared to when they launched the Vita.
Part of me thinks this will be DOA (dead on arrival). They’ve lost a good chunk of the abandoned Vita playerbase (me included) and the current gen are either all on the steam deck or other derivatives.
This would be a good moment for Steam to begin a non-stop marketing campaign in Japan
I hope its a handheld that can play downgraded PS5 and PS4 games instead of only handheld games made for it. What drew me to the switch was that it is just one main console that can be portable, and same with the Steam Deck of it playing the same copies of my PC games in handheld.
This seems like the only way it has a shot. I don’t know that PS5 games are necessary, but PS4 absolutely are. Make it a portable PS4, and there is a real market there. The only downside is, it wouldn’t work with PS4 discs, which would limit sales to existing digital only owners. Also, it would be on a system without a significant new game in site. The library is 99% done. There isn’t a must play on the horizon to market. You have to hope the existing exclusives is enough.
Honestly, I talked myself out of it. It is a bigger risk than I initially thought.
The article says the device is at least 2 years out. There will be a trickle of PS4 games at best in 2026. I don’t see how those are going to be the system sellers to drive a new system.
Holy crap, that thing had a backlit LCD and could play 16-bit home console games on the go. What a beast. How did I not even know this thing existed? 0.o
I appreciate the balls of trying to compete in that marketplace still. They’ll need a killer exclusive to draw anyone away from the massive amount of content available for the Deck.
I like my deck but it’s still pretty janky sometimes. I have to restart it pretty frequently and it bugs out a lot swapping frequently between game mode/desktop mode
Oh I don’t regret my purchase at all. But a lot of people don’t have the tolerance for the deck’s day to day experience. It does require a little patience.
One can only hope. I still use my vita regularly. The handheld whatever that they released last year wasn’t a good replacement since it was remote play only.
It’s a non-buy after the way they treated the Vita.
You can’t have a handheld if you don’t make games for it and, no, hundreds of crappy shovelware indie games that can be played on the devices people already own do not count.
The portal only really works where you have decent internet, in practice that’s basically just within your house (because hotel internet typically sucks, and you probably can’t play at work).
A more powerful variant would allow you to play anywhere (on your commute, in a plane, …).
So they would be completely different products. A cheap portal if you want to play in your bed or if someone’s using your TV, this more expensive one for real playing on the go.
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