PS Portal is excellent, despite the limitations of being streaming only. Playing PS5 games on a handheld is an awesome experience.
If these plans are true, it should be along the lines of Steam Deck. Let it run existing PlayStation games, downloaded from the Store. If it's PS4 games only, that would be somewhat disappointing, and hopefully it would include many PS5 games too. I suspect it would be a struggle to shrink the enormous PS5 down to a handheld, but with reduced resolution (1080p) and some clever emulation, it seems possible that many PS5 games could be playable in a reduced form on a handheld. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my behalf.
Splitting development studios over another platform would be a mistake, considering the release schedule for major games has been somewhat limited.
I would hope a returning PSP to be able to natively run already purchased PS1, PS2, PSP, Vita and PS4 games, which would be quite the library.
I'm highly sceptical of Sony's support looking beyond that however and into the future, as the PS Vita was a massive disappointment after the admittedly brilliant launch window, and first party releases on the PS5 pale in comparison to the PS2, 3 and 4. And as for VR…
The actual games was the first thing I thought of as well, I can't actually think of an exclusive that has released this year for the PS5, never mind adding a portable console into the mix as well.
I think hybrid handheld, dockable consoles are the way forward. You get the best of both worlds in terms of where and how you want to play your games, a PS branded handheld PC type device that connects to the PSN store would be huge but they’ll need to really focus on getting PS1,2 and 3 games on it to really drive home the ‘the legacy of PlayStation in your hands’ marketing which would help this sell a ton.
It’d be remarkable if by the time we get a 3rd iteration of the Switch, the 3 main console rivals will be showing up with Switch 3, then the second version of Sony’s and Xbox’s hybrid consoles
Edit, I would be all for it though, the hybrid nature of the Switch is close to perfect, it might mean we’d get nearly equal third party support over a trio of hybrid consoles as well? Unless Sony and Xbox go all in on the power aspect of theirs rather than a balanced approach Nintendo took with the Switch.
For all of Sony’s missteps in hardware over the years, I am somewhat bemused how common it is for people online to refer to the original PSP as a flop. The DS was a mega hit (in excess of 150 million) but the PSP still managed a rollicking 80 million. It was Vita they totally fudged (I don’t think there are any official figures, but it could be as low as 6-7 million).
Yeah the PSP did really well, didn't the Vita initially start very well but then just barely anyone actually made games for it? Never had either of them, but both looked like great bits of kit, the Vita especially.
The Vita is a great console. The memory cards are too expensive, and not enough support. But goddamn, I loved the bloody thing. Even so more than the PSP.
Got both the PSP and Vita at launch. The free copy of Spider Man was the only UMD movie I watched on the PSP. I say watched, as I don’t think I even got through the whole thing. A Natasha Bedingfield music video sticks in my mind as well for some reason. Maybe that was on the Official PSP Magazine demo disc. I remember a ton of UMD films then turning up in my local Poundland after a few years, all being flogged off for under a fiver. Only way that was going to take off, or at least tick over, was if the UMDs were bundled with a DVD copy (like they do now with 4K and Blu Ray) for maybe a fiver more. Like the memory cards it was another pricing blunder from Sony.
The games in that first year though were fantastic. Ridge Racer, WipEout, Lumines, Everybody’s Golf, Lemmings, GTA Liberty City Stories, LocoRoco, Burnout Legends, Virtua Tennis World Tour, Mercury, Pursuit Force, Outrun 2006, Dexter, Metal Gear Acid 2, Tekken Dark Resurrection, Syphon Filter Dark Mirror. It really was very good. In the next few years you then had stuff like Patapon, Every Extend Extra, God of War and Killzone Liberation turn up.
Price of the memory cards hurt the whole media device aspect (plus it wasn’t exactly Apple seamless to do), and too many lazy PS2 ports - games priced too closely to their bigger brother. Were you going to pay £30 for Tomb Raider Legend on Xbox or PS2, or were you going to spend £30 on an inferior PSP version? Again, no bundle initiatives readily available unless shops came up with them (did they?), therefore only really appealing to those players who were regularly away from their home console. Some games worked impeccably well (like Outrun), most unfortunately didn’t. Compare and contrast to the Nintendo DS, which had far more unique and custom built experiences - developers couldn’t just port over a Gamecube title, nor was there an abundance of N64 games to repackage. The quick redesign Nintendo did on the DS in 2006 was also a 100% improvement.
ITSMILNER wrote:I think hybrid handheld, dockable consoles are the way forward. You get the best of both worlds in terms of where and how you want to play your games, a PS branded handheld PC type device that connects to the PSN store would be huge but they’ll need to really focus on getting PS1,2 and 3 games on it to really drive home the ‘the legacy of PlayStation in your hands’ marketing which would help this sell a ton.
KK wrote:It’s taken them long enough, but streaming service ITVX has finally been added to PlayStation. This marks the first time ITV has had a streaming service on PlayStation since 2015 and the PS3.
Kind of crazy how the PS3 is a better multimedia box than the PS5 in terms of breadth of services.
* was. They needlessly deactivated most of the streaming services on PS3.
That's very annoying. My PS3 is currently boxed but I was intending to use it as a media box when we got our new house.
The original PS3 is still very good for memory card and USB support however. It also reads CDs, something the PS4 and 5 can’t do. Well, I suppose they could but Sony have it disabled. The XMB menu system and moving thumbnails makes the PS3 easier to navigate, whereas media support on PS5 is hidden away. Had to go online just to find out how to get MPEG4 playing, and even then it’s frustratingly temperamental and errors out frequently.
I did use the Folding At Home initiative and VidZone a lot (both long since closed). I had Sky+ HD at the time, but I know quite a few people used their PS3s as a recordable Freeview box.
I absolutely loved my PSP it was the perfect travelling device and great for college too
Also easy to sail the high seals and load games onto it
Probably now I wouldn’t be the market for it, the PS5 is more than enough for me, and I’ve not really an interest in playing the back catalogue on a portable device.
gaminglegend wrote:I absolutely loved my PSP it was the perfect travelling device and great for college too
Also easy to sail the high seals and load games onto it
Probably now I wouldn’t be the market for it, the PS5 is more than enough for me, and I’ve not really an interest in playing the back catalogue on a portable device.