Sony’s PlayStation Portal seems close to useless for $200

Sony finally introduced the details One of the new PlayStation portable accessories they call PlayStation Portal. It’s a PS5 console cut in half with a screen in the middle, capable of playing PS5 games, but the details have always been fuzzy.

now? It’s unclear why this product exists, and why you’d pay $200 for it.

PlayStation Portal is a remote console, nothing more. You can connect to your PS5 via your home Wifi network, and it streams games from your PS5 to your screen. This is basically it. What is remarkable about this is what it does not do:

• It does not contain Bluetooth, you must purchase a PlayStation Link compatible headset
• There is no local playback, not even to download and play media
• There is no cloud streaming on PS5, it is Just Stream from PS5 over Wifi only

Sony explains what the unique use case seems to be for the PlayStation portal:

“PlayStation Portal is the ideal device for home gamers who may need to share their living room TV or simply want to play PS5 games in another room of the house.”

So, it’s the Switch, but you also need to own a $400+ PS5 already, because it doesn’t play anything locally, and it can’t stream from the actual PS5 cloud library. I think the idea is that families fighting over who gets to use the TV can buy one of these (again, for a price very close to the cost of a switch) to give someone the ability to play remotely. But I don’t think you can have two people using the same PS5 playing two games simultaneously here.

Can Somebody benefit from this? certainly. But this seems to be missing everything people love about the Nintendo Switch, and it looks a lot like the Wii U gamepad, one of Nintendo’s biggest failures ever.

Like, it’s okay, I guess. It does no harm. I’m not quite sure why Sony thinks this is a piece of hardware worth pursuing if it’s not going to give it more functionality. The cooler tech that debuted was actually two new headsets meant to be used in conjunction with this (or with the regular PlayStation 5) that use planar magnetic drivers. now Those It might be worth $200 (which is really what someone costs). PlayStation Portal will be released later this year.

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