Sony Working on Handheld Console for PS5 Games to Rival Switch [Bloomberg]

submitted a week ago by Rekall Incorporated@lemm.ee

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/48220869

Source Bloomberg Article

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56 Comments

As a Vita fan, FUCK YOU Sony!

I am in a similar boat. And it isn't just Vita, they did same with PS VR and PS VR 2.

If it isn't their main home console, Sony can't be trusted to support it with their first party titles.

Going to wait for actual announcement and details to make up my mind about this, but don't care about it in general, and I doubt there is much they can say about it that would make me buy it on day 1.

The only reason I’m considering a PSVR2 right now is the option to connect it to PC. But it’s apparently not the best experience, and needs a dedicated adapter.

Anything that isn't a instant success gets dropped by sony faster than a hot potato. See: PS Vita, PSVR2.

Watch them enforce a proprietary storage device that is extremely overpriced sending the whole thing spiraling down into oblivion. Fingers crossed I'm wrong.

Hopefully, it will become a new incredible emulation platform when jailbroken, as the other two.

for that it would have to be priced somewhere in the ball park of the steam deck and offer more compute power than that. i don't see this from sony, i expect either a very expensive device marketed as as "premium" handheld or an iteration on their PlayStation Portal(?) streaming handheld.

PlayStation Portal(?)

PSP actually stands for PlayStation Portugal.

Plus, they want to compete with the Switch. So it's not going to be good for any newer emulation. It is either going to be okay for a year or two and then struggle with its own games, like the current Switch or it's going to be DOA because Sony can't see and plan further than the tips of their fucking noses.

And it will require a proprietary dock to plug it into a TV, but they'll only produce something like 5% the amount of docks as consoles.

Proprietary storage is Microsoft things now. Xbox series needs specific ssd to expand the storage, while PS5 can use any SSD that has enough speed

It was a callback to the Vita (I have one) era with the stupidly priced proprietary expansion cards. I got a 16GB one, had to sell a kidney to get it.

Well, you still have that other kidney...

Kidneys are overrated, cortisol causes anxiety!

Fuck Sony. It'll be garbage and they'll do something moronic with it like most of their decision making the last 15 years.

Vita owners will complain about memory cards, but they overblow that issue. It was a bit of an issue. THE issue was Sony forgot they had a handheld. They quit really giving a shit about it after only a year or two. They barely pushed it or pushed for games on it.

The memory card complaints are just lemmings. The issue was bigger than that.

Heck, I bought mine after all the death bells, and still enjoyed all the old exclusives plus the new indie titles coming out.

Hopefully we don't have a PSVR2 situation.

Sony does have the best controller haptic system and that in a handheld could be great. I think that if the push into handhelds by Sony/Xbox to try and compete with Nintendo and the steam deck causes some smaller scale and fun games to be released, that would be a positive for the industry.

I think if they wanna push the haptics in a handheld format they need to figure something out about the terrible battery life first

Oh yeah that was at the forefront of my mind when writing that. A handheld would have the option of a much larger battery than in the dualsense, but there's the question of how powerful this thing is expected to be and how much juice is required for that.

I hope the haptics don't go away, it's the best new feature of the ps5 IMO.

I would expect half of the haptics to go away, tbh. They're much weirder for a handheld because it can affect the screen, which is part of the controller doing haptic things. Add on the extra battery drain and I'll bet we get the adaptive triggers and *maybe* some mediocre version of vibration.

True. I suppose depending on how they designed it, they could keep them though. The PS portal for example has a screen and haptics/adaptive triggers.

That's a thin client obviously I understand.

Oh yeah they could call it something like a portable PlayStation, a PPS?

I honestly don't know how this is supposed to succeed unless it's literally a handheld PS4, and even then, the market for that over a Steam Deck is likely minuscule.

Even if it's a handheld PS4, if it can't play any latest PS5 games, then Sony would need to support it with games made specifically for it, and I don't think they give enough output to support two systems.

Steam Deck is supported by the huge steam library, so difficult to compete with it without good first party support.

If a game is low spec enough to run on a PS4, it typically has a PS4 version as far as I can tell, but maybe there are exceptions I haven't kept up with. And in order to have a handheld PlayStation that doesn't require its own versions of games like the Vita and PSP did in the past, the best they can really hope for is a PS4. That's why this problem seems insurmountable unless they go the PC route like everyone else.

I wasn't talking about 3rd party, there are enough of them that will run on a PS4 level hardware as long as we don't count new AAA. Problem is first party games. If there are no first party games, then on what basis can it compete with Steam Deck or upcoming Switch 2?

Steam Deck User base: "This shit doesn't even play Duke 3D or neogeo" *toss*

Sony don't get that the entire reason I like my Deck is that it's a swiss-army-knife for gaming.

Unless Sony is competing with a Windows or Linux x64 SBC like Valve, Asus and MSI did, it ain't happening. It will then be a product not for us, but for mainline Sony fans, when it could be for both.

buuuut it won't be.

I mean, you’re not everyone. I like my Deck, but emulation is generally too janky, unwieldy, and exposes bad old game design for me.

New games expose bad new game design, for me, and I find them pandering and shallow most of the time, so I guess you're right. Different strokes.

Remember when they tried that last time?

Look, I actually liked the Vita but only after I got one second hand after putting it off for years. The overpriced memory cards didn't exactly advertise the device well.

Within a few years the handheld market will mainly be between Switch 2 and Steam Deck 2.
Competitors have to step up their game if they want to compete with these guys.

I imagine Steam might have a power/messaging problem if they make a successor to the Deck. “Does this run” becomes more confusing.

Eh. Steam Deck will have to up its game significantly if it wants to be in the same ballpark as Switch. It’s a little baby compared to Switch sakes sales, not even close.

I mean, the Switch has sold over 146 *million* units by now. Sales numbers for the Steam Deck aren't public, but I'd estimate them around 3 or 4 million at most. That is a big difference.

For comparison, the PSP sold 80 million. Even the PS Vita sold 15 or 16 million. The biggest seller among handhelds is still the NDS at 154 million.

Of course, these handhelds have been in stores for a lot longer than the Steam Deck, but those numbers are a *lot* bigger!

I don't agree. The Steam Deck is a big hit, especially considering it's Valves *first* handheld.
The Steam Deck 2 will become a huge success. Mark my words.

Switch sold almost fifty times more in its lifetime. Do you expect the Steam Deck 2 to teach those sales numbers? I mean, it would be a miracle for Valve.

What is interesting is that streaming gaming has not filled this market space and on device processing is still more favorable. If you think about it the ps5 streaming controller thing is already a portable ps5, they just have to move the processing to their servers. If anything, this tells us streaming is just not there yet for the vast majority and portable consoles will continue to do their own processing for the foreseeable future.

There are just to many restrictions on streaming. For local streaming you need to first, buy the original console and then buy additional hardware to stream to. And then you are still tied to a single network.

For cloud streaming you need to have a reasonably fast and reliable internet connection which is just not conducive to many of the situations one would want a portable console for.

The portal can’t stream from the cloud. It’s only able to remote play from your ps5 so it’s closer to a wireless display with a controller attached.

They have just released a beta of streaming directly from cloud. Don't know if there are any limitations, but if everything goes well, it may release officially in a few months.

Is it going to use physical media? If not, I don't give a fuck. Nintendo, despite all the other shit they do are committed to physical media for the foreseeable future. I believe the Switch 2 will be my last console as I doubt the PS6 will have a disc drive.

My PS5 already spins its fans up loud enough to drown out the TV from clear across the room, so if they expect to create a device that runs PS5 games at comparable quality and also make it handheld, I don't foresee this device actually being usable. The fans will be louder than any speakers they'll want to fit in there and the thing will be the size and shape of a cinderblock.

I could be wrong, and I have been before, but if I am this time I'll be pretty surprised.

Have you tried cleaning the fans? They aren't difficult to access.

It's less than six months old and has its own dedicated shelf.... I did think to check that, but no, it came right out of the box being this loud.

Now that I think about it though, I haven't seen any other PS5s in person to compare, so for all I know I just have a bad unit.

My PS5 is 4 months old and my fans have never been that loud. Not even when two have been on and running at the same time. Granted we weren't playing disc games, but still... Fan noise shouldn't be that loud

You know what, now that you mention it, you're actually completely right. It's the disc drive making that noise. The fans are loud, but tolerable, the disc drive is the loud one. Hot damn. I never actually put 2 and 2 together there, I just went and checked it after what you said, and yeah it's the drive.

So, actually, I was totally wrong, and I highly doubt Sony is going to try to make the PS5P run discs, so that's an interesting turn of events.

yeaaaa no thanks. They are about 2 or 3 generations too late for that. After what they have tried to pull with the ps5, plus the price point and the fact that it would be a worse more restricted system than the steam deck. I'll keep my deck where I get an overall better experience + no monthly sub fee.

Yeah, that will totally save them. Who asked for a PS handheld?

Another freebsd unix wannabe console 😴

Make some games worth playing first

The PS5 is my last console. I'm done.

Cool, but I can't afford a newer graphics card now since they cost over $2k and a console is only $700 and can do 4k 60fps with ray tracing.

Its 600 dollars for a 4070... and a 4070 is overkill to compete with the ps5

It's even cheaper if you're getting an AMD card which would be closer to what the PS5 is running.