When a company does something that is, at the very least, innovative and revolutionary, it’s not uncommon for other people to jump on and try to mimic it in their own way. In the video game industry, this happens quite a bit. Furthermore, in recent years, Sony and Xbox have been doing their best to mimic some of the industry-breaking standards that Nintendo has put forth. They first did it with the motion controls craze The Big N started, and now, Sony is throwing its hat into the “portable console gaming” ring via the PlayStation Portal. But you might remember it being called “PlayStation Q.”
The rebranded device got new details from Sony today via a blog post. In it, they announced the device will use Wi-Fi to connect to your PS5 so you can do remote play. That is a key difference from the Nintendo Switch and other similar devices, but it’s not the only difference.
For example, the price point of the PlayStation Portal is $200, which many will state is a fair price point. However, considering that you have to pay $500 for a standard PS5 makes it a $700 combo package, not including the games you play on them.
Even with that, Sony seems very high on their device:
“PlayStation Portal is the perfect device for gamers in households where they might need to share their living room TV or simply want to play PS5 games in another room of the house.
“PlayStation Portal will connect remotely to your PS5 over Wi-Fi, so you’ll be able to swiftly jump from playing on your PS5 to your PlayStation Portal. PlayStation Portal can play supported games that are installed on your PS5 console and use the Dualsense controller.”
So, in their own words, this is only a device you’d want to get if you desire to play your PS5 games in other rooms of the house. They also noted that any game you have to stream through your PS5 won’t work on the Portal.
So where does this leave them? Well, once again, you could argue that they didn’t live up to the standard that was set by a Nintendo device. Regarding the Switch, you can pick up the device and play it anywhere with or without the internet. But that’s not the case here with the Portal.
It’ll be interesting to see how well the device sells, given the limitations that are built into it.
