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PlayStation’s first Remote Play dedicated device, PlayStation Portal remote player, to launch later this year at $199.99

Anyone seen if it can be used as a controller for normal play?
I think the final deal-breaker for me is having to touch the screen to use the sensor button.
I never touch my switch screen.
 

mitchman

Gold Member
Where did Sony said that? They said it does support the new protocol, which doesn't implies that it doesn't support Bluetooth.
I believe it was IGN that said it in their hands-on with the device at the Playstation HQ in the US, and it required the special Playstation headsets. Seeing how I can't connect my Sony XM5 BT headset to the PS5, this does not surprise me.
 
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just looked into it and PlayStation Link is just for audio and not for other types of communicAtion like Cnet suggested. Cnet done goofed again.
 

Imtjnotu

Member
I believe it was IGN that said it in their hands-on with the device at the Playstation HQ in the US, and it required the special Playstation headsets. Seeing how I can't connect my Sony XM5 BT headset to the PS5, this does not surprise me.
wasnt there something before stating that if you use your regular headset with a dongle in the same area you get audio?
 
My major issues are this:

1. No Bluetooth.
2. No ability to stream PS+. Limits the device even further.
3. Bad battery life, come on the Logitech cloud device gets 12+ hours. This one is up in the air depending on the weight of the device. But is it's only 4 hours that would be unacceptable.
4. No OLED, I would pay $50 more for a OLED.

The last issue is unknown until we can actually use it, but it looks rather flimsy.

I like the idea of it, but the execution is not great.

I think a product with all your wants would cost $299 or more and they wanted a cheaper price target
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I think a product with all your wants would cost $299 or more and they wanted a cheaper price target
This thing doesnt even have a real GPU, CPU, SSD, RAM that something like a switch has or PS Vita had. It is literally just a controller with a screen attached to it and a small chip to run whatever OS they are using to stream data.

It is probably a $100 bom max. they definitely shouldve had OLED and better battery life for $200. Hell, for $200 they couldve easily put in a 4k screen in there. These things are not that expensive. Sony is probably making a massive $100 profit off of this thing.
 
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This thing doesnt even have a real GPU, CPU, SSD, RAM that something like a switch has or PS Vita had. It is literally just a controller with a screen attached to it and a small chip to run whatever OS they are using to stream data.

It is probably a $100 bom max. they definitely shouldve had OLED and better battery life for $200.

A controller, a screen, and a bigger battery aren’t exactly cheap and Sony needs to make margin on this product since it’s not a loss leader or zero net profit like the console is
 

Giallo Corsa

Gold Member
$199 price tag seems fine.

If you were to go on Amazon and "DIY" this, it'd cost you:
1) at least $50 for the absolute cheapest-ass 8 inch tablet,
2) about $80 for an official PS5 controller.
3) about $10 for the clip thing to attach your controller to the tablet (if you want to do that)

So we're already at $140 for the DIY option. Then Sony says "Hey Ibiza Pocholo, you can have this ready-made, it-just-works version made by us and therefore certified and guaranteed by us, to work with your PS5 without extra messing around and googling shit for only an extra $60". I'd certainly pay an extra $60 for an all-in-one device guaranteed by Sony themselves to work. Besides if you buy one of those bottom-of-the-barrel unknown brand tablets from China, who knows how long it'll last before it explodes or something.

If you think of it like that, it's not really expensive. Besides, who cares if it's not a "real tablet"? it wouldn't be powerful enough to run PS5 games anyway so you'd just have deadweight for the sake of having a shitty android tablet.

Right on, and especially when it comes to the tablet...the cheapest ones out there (Lenovo/Redmi) still have the BT AND wif-fi chip on the same SOC, meaning, good luck with those internet/connection speeds when you have BT on.

Also - and this is what people.dont get, the whole thing isn't as plug n play as they think, on Android, even 13, the button configuration when connecting the Dualsense is all kinds of messed up to the point of rendering the whole thing unplayable and we have to thank Google for that.

Basically :
- Cheap tablets are a no-go due to shit SOCs and lack of (proper) Dualsense support.
Also when I say "cheap" I mean from 180€ and above.

Same thing applies to most android smartphones out there - this thing has been going on for more than 2 years now btw.

PS : Remote play works flawlessly on Apple devices but we all know how much they go for - even if you opt for the 2021 iPad (mini) your looking at 250 Eurodollars minimum.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
I'll never be able to take people serious anymore who game on PlayStation but complain about the 'childish' look of the Switch. Both this thing and the PS5 as well as it's controller, looks like what a 9 year old in 1998 decided looked like 'the future'.
It really does look like a “PSP2” fan render from 2008 ngl…
 
Sony made the right decision, if there is one, for this product because any more and it would be sure to fail, and it still might. Better to go cheap and try to make a profit vs taking a huge gamble with a loaded product that would be outside of a majority's price range.
 
I would guess that they want to market it very clearly as a PlayStation 5 accessory, and feel that cloud functionality would potentially confuse that positioning of the product.

The PS5 has already shown itself to be viable hardware wise in Japan. Its not hardware sales that are the issue there.

Would only half-agree on this. If PS5 was truly viable in Japan, then it'd be doing that through hardware and software sales. Hardware sales are mostly there (they dropped below the 40K threshold this past week FWIW), but with physical software sales it simply isn't much of a presence. Nintendo's 1P and select 3P Switch software like Minecraft are the ones pushing the real numbers in Japan.

Again, at least WRT physical software. We don't have enough data on digital sales to see if that makes up the difference for PS5.

I'm not so convinced. I don't think they'll add cloud as that would mean you wouldn't need to be a PS5 owner to own one.

It would seem like a half-hearted effort then on Sony's part IMO. Even if a person were to not buy a PS5, they would have to subscribe to PS+ Premium, so the Portal could've been an avenue for getting additional PS+ subscribers without needing to go against their 1P business policy with new software releases to do so.

If people want new PS5 games Day 1, let alone natively whatsoever, they would still need to buy a PS5. Otherwise someone on simply a Portal would have to wait potentially 2+ years in order to play, say, Wolverine through PS+. But someone buying a Portal to conveniently access PS+ content in the manner they currently do, would be unbothered by that stagger time. They aren't suddenly expecting Day 1 of 1P Sony content into the service.

Uh no, the PS TV was a standalone device that ran Vita games. Completely different.

I think that poster means in terms of the value proposition of the product to the market, not necessarily them being similar in use-case or function.

I do bit necessarily disagree… now, if the video streaming is really Wii U quality or better AND if they allowed Wii U style asymmetric gameplay (one player with a DS, one player with a PSP (it does hurt to call it like that 😂), and they could play together on the same game and help each other or you could use both the controller for maps, player stats, secondary camera, etc… then it would be an interesting purchase indeed.

Sadly I don't think any of that will be possible because otherwise Sony would've mentioned it with this blog post. And you're right, those features would have added more use-cases and value to the product, in ways actually influencing game design in unique ways .

We probably aren't going to see anything like that from this, however.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Any GAF owners who have one of the backbones, can you take a picture and posts here please ?

Looking for actual pictures, not glamor marketing shots.
 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
It’s also very light.
So you get to play ps5 games and carry your progress because well… you are playing on ps5.
It is very light and uses real dualsense.
What’s not to like?
 

midnightAI

Member
Lots of single people with no families commenting about this again I see, it's niche but it certainly has its place, day 1 for me (and my family)

Also good to see those who have no intention on buying this who complained $300 is too much (based on dumb comments from MS) are now saying $200 is too much
 

Bojanglez

The Amiga Brotherhood
You shouldn't be confused.

I said I can see myself playing Return from my bed, but this is streaming only. Which doesn't say I don't like it, but its less ideal than actual hardware. Which I understand because of price point.

Secondly I just ask why it doesn't feature cloud gaming. Remote play means you need to have the game installed on your PS5. With cloud you could try out some games. Its just strange that they are offering cloud gaming but not on this device. It means it would lock me out from my Premium content like PS3 classics.
I imagine it will come. I think they are being cautious with their cloud stuff. I imagine (hope) maybe by this time next year they will make more of a splash with cloud and this will include Portal support with hopefully, browser, Android and maybe even iOS support.

It is better to launch a product with firm commitments of its base level functionality and not let fans down. At the moment it is marketed as a luxury accessory, but may evolve into more.
 

Woopah

Member
Would only half-agree on this. If PS5 was truly viable in Japan, then it'd be doing that through hardware and software sales. Hardware sales are mostly there (they dropped below the 40K threshold this past week FWIW), but with physical software sales it simply isn't much of a presence. Nintendo's 1P and select 3P Switch software like Minecraft are the ones pushing the real numbers in Japan.

Again, at least WRT physical software. We don't have enough data on digital sales to see if that makes up the difference for PS5.
The indicators we have from the PS Download charts in Japan are that digital software sales are also pretty low there. But I don't think a handheld accessory (especially not a cloud streaming handheld accessory) is something that would have any meaningful impact on software sales.

It would seem like a half-hearted effort then on Sony's part IMO. Even if a person were to not buy a PS5, they would have to subscribe to PS+ Premium, so the Portal could've been an avenue for getting additional PS+ subscribers without needing to go against their 1P business policy with new software releases to do so.

If people want new PS5 games Day 1, let alone natively whatsoever, they would still need to buy a PS5. Otherwise someone on simply a Portal would have to wait potentially 2+ years in order to play, say, Wolverine through PS+. But someone buying a Portal to conveniently access PS+ content in the manner they currently do, would be unbothered by that stagger time. They aren't suddenly expecting Day 1 of 1P Sony content into the service.
Maybe not half hearted, but I would say this thing is small in scale. Its an accessory meant to sell to 1% of PS5 owners, not a new product offering.
 
That would be fine if the device actually had a jack, but there was no mention of that.

yes there is a jack port on the device....


PlayStation Portal can play supported games that are installed on your PS5 console and use the Dualsense controller. It also includes a 3.5mm audio jack for wired audio
 
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vivftp

Member
This thing doesnt even have a real GPU, CPU, SSD, RAM that something like a switch has or PS Vita had. It is literally just a controller with a screen attached to it and a small chip to run whatever OS they are using to stream data.

It is probably a $100 bom max. they definitely shouldve had OLED and better battery life for $200. Hell, for $200 they couldve easily put in a 4k screen in there. These things are not that expensive. Sony is probably making a massive $100 profit off of this thing.

This is a device with no additional monetization aspects once it's sold, so earning a profit off of the sale is going to be a big goal for them. Otherwise why bother? Accessories historically have huge markups, and this should be no different. We know SIE love OLED (OG Vita, PSVR, PSVR2) and no doubt they would have considered OLED. They also would have had a target price to aim for and a target profit margin, and apparently that didn't allow for an OLED display. That's perfectly fine, ensuring they hit the target price would be the most important thing for a device like this.

Look at the DualSense Edge, it's basically a normal DualSense with a better finish, some extra buttons and functions, and a couple extra accessories. That costs as much as the Portal. I'm willing to bet the Portals BOM exceeds that of the Edge.
 

vivftp

Member
Sharing my take on why the Portal doesn't have PS+ cloud streaming support, I think it's actually very simple. Right now PS+ cloud streaming officially supports PS4, PS5 and PC. We know the Portal runs Android, and at this point in time Sony doesn't have an Android cloud streaming app. That's it.

Now we know Sony are planning an "aggressive cloud" push that we should learn more about in the next couple of months. We'll have to wait and see if that might involve an Android app, but even if it doesn't right now, it could still come at some point in the future.

They can't sell a device on the promise of an unannounced feature that could come at some indeterminate point in the future, which is why they only discuss the remote play functionality of the Portal. If or when Sony does announce an Android cloud streaming app, I fully expect that they'll announce that this functionality is being added to the Portal via a firmware update.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Shouldn't a handheld be portable? How the fuck are you going to toss that thing in a bag?

You won't really want to bring this out anyway, since it only works with places with wifi nor offer offline gaming.

Unlike the many other better and more powerful alternatives like ROG Ally, Steam Deck, Logitech G Cloud, Razer Edge etc
 
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Miles708

Member
It's 200$ for a LCD screen you can only basically play youtube on.
And a controller.

Oh and you need another 500$ worth of electronics for it to work.
 

CLW

Member
This thing has less purpose than PS TV again you can buy a $99 controller that attaches to your smartphone so WHY would I buy this instead
 
This thing has less purpose than PS TV again you can buy a $99 controller that attaches to your smartphone so WHY would I buy this instead

You won't get the same control experience on that setup. This has all the features of the Dual Sense built-in...

No weird third-party solution can compete with that
 

Aces High

Member
Do I need a high-end router to have fun with in-home streaming or does it work just fine with a random halfway-decent router?
 
Do I need a high-end router to have fun with in-home streaming or does it work just fine with a random halfway-decent router?

Just connect the device to a 5Ghz network, you will be fine...

And we still don't know whether it has some kind of "direct connection" to the console. That wouldn't even require you to have a router
 

Gambit2483

Member
I'll probably grab this on sale during Black Friday. $200 is not bad but considering how limited this is and what it doesn't support, it's less of an ideal price.
 
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