Sony PlayStation Portal unveiled & it’s cheaper than we thought
SonySony has announced the name and price of its brand-new cloud streaming handheld, the PlayStation Portal, which will retail for $199.99 and be released this year.
Sony’s Project Q is now the PlayStation Portal. The company announced the new name, along with an official price point for the device, which is will be released this year. The PlayStation Portal isn’t a new dedicated handheld from Sony, but is more in line with the Logitech G Cloud or Abxylute handhelds. These focus on streaming and remote play, rather than providing natively rendered portable gaming experiences.
The PlayStation Portal will launch alongside new PlayStation Pulse branded wireless earbuds and a new headset, both featuring “low latency audio” provided over “PlayStation Link” technology.
As previously reported, the PlayStation Portal will have the full suite of features from the DualSense controller the PS5 currently uses. This includes the haptic feedback. However, Sony has confirmed that you cannot use the device for PS VR2 games, nor can you stream games from PlayStation Plus. We suspect that the system might have its own PS Plus streaming app. Since there could be latency issues should you wish to cloud stream something already cloud streamed.
We still don’t know what operating system the device uses, but we did get a small glimpse of its interface, which appears to match the PlayStation 5.
Sony also stated that the device will need a minimum of 5Mbps for streaming and a recommended 15Mbps for a comfortable play session.
How much is the PlayStation Portal?
The PlayStation Portal will be priced at $199.99/£199.99. This is cheaper than we initially thought, with the Logitech G Cloud starting at $349.99. This is quite competitive pricing, especially when compared to the Abxylure handheld, which currently retails for 10 dollars more
Preorders aren’t open just yet, but we suspect this will follow a similar model to that of the DualSense Edge and PS VR2. Sony will launch the hardware on their PlayStation Direct store, and then release it to the wider world at regular stores.