PlayStation Portal Update Removes Major Friction With This New Feature

Despite its limits as a game streaming device, PlayStation Portal has proven surprisingly successful—and now, the update allowing for PlayStation Portal to stream from Sony's servers instead of your own PlayStation 5 has finally come out of beta, meaning the device can now technically function as a standalone handheld. There are still many caveats to that categorization, including the fact it still needs to stream all of its games over a speedy Internet connection, but no longer needing to own a PS5 or PS5 Pro just to use a Portal is a huge boon.

With the PlayStation Portal costing $199.99 USD (or $179.00 on some still-running Black Friday sales) and PlayStation Plus Premium ranging from $17.99 for one month, $49.99 for three months, or $159.99 for a full year, the barrier of entry to the PlayStation 5 is technically lower than ever. You still need a fast enough Internet connection to actually utilize cloud streaming (and many have reported that the real requirements seem to be much higher than the advertised 15 megabits per second), but other limitations of PlayStation 5, like needing to take up an entire monitor or living room TV, further tilt matters in the Portal's favor. Owners of Nintendo Switch consoles who also have to share a living room TV can attest to the utility of simply resorting to handheld play for their favorite console ecosystem-locked games—and users of Portal are reporting a similar utility.

All that said, it's still hard not to look at the PlayStation Portal and think about what could have been. Sony's PlayStation Portable released in March 2005 in the U.S. and December 2004 in Japan, making Sony's original standalone handheld old enough to drink. The follow-up PlayStation Vita (codenamed "NGP" for Next-Generation Portable [Editor's note: I'm old enough to remember when NGP stood for Neo Geo Portable...]) launched in December 2011 in Japan and February 2012 elsewhere. The streaming-only Portal didn't arrive until November 2023, leaving a decade-long gap since the last PlayStation handheld, and since PSP and PS Vita were both capable of home console streaming and local gaming, Portal still feels like something of a downgrade.


Whenever people ask me what the best PlayStation handheld is, I don't reply with PSP, PS Vita, or even PS Portal—I instead point to the Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED. (Bonus points if you happen to know PS Vita initially shipped with AMOLED—truly ahead of its time.) With the use of Chiaki or official Remote Play apps, either Steam Deck can be used to stream PlayStation games, and Chiaki streaming even supports HDR. Beyond cloud streaming, one also has to look at the sheer number of legitimate PlayStation-to-PC ports that are fully playable on Steam Deck, like God of War or Spider-Man. If one is willing wade into the murky waters of emulation, Steam Deck also proves capable of emulation of PlayStation 1-3, including PSP and PS Vita games.

All this isn't to say that Sony improving the PlayStation Portal isn't a good thing—it is—but Sony should also know what we really want by now. Rumors of a PlayStation 6 handheld, if they come to fruition, would finally give PS Vita the official follow-up it deserves. Otherwise, Portal simply isn't filling that gap in the market—and in fact, the "NGP" idea may die entirely in favor of handheld gaming PCs that truly run current-gen games, not just cut-down ports.

Image Credit: Sony, Valve