The PlayStation Portal will get some new features in the future, a senior Sony official has revealed. This confirmation stems from a recent interview that also shed some more light on how the popular PlayStation device received the ability to operate as a standalone console.

November 15 marked the first anniversary of the PS Portal's release. The gadget was initially marketed as a PS5 accessory, allowing users to stream games from their home console. But come late November 2024, Sony introduced experimental support for playing games on the PS Portal without a PS5, by streaming them directly from the cloud.

The decision to add this feature did not happen overnight, but has long been on Sony's radar. That's according to Hiromi Wakai, SIE VP of Product Management, who said as much in a recent interview with Game File. "The cloud game streaming option has always been in our roadmap since the early development stage," Wakai explained. Be that as it may, the decision to finally add it was partially motivated by post-launch feedback from PS Portal users, many of whom wanted cloud streaming support, the executive said.

Wakai explained that Sony "wanted to be extra careful" about delivering the best possible experience from day one, which is why some features, including cloud gaming support, were missing at launch. Sony is now eager to continue this approach and keep refining the PS Portal based on user feedback moving forward, the SIE official said, thus confirming that even more post-launch features are on the way. Even the cloud gaming support is likely to be improved in the foreseeable future, as it's currently still in beta and only works with 120 titles that are part of the PS Plus Premium catalog—a fraction of a fraction of the PS5 library.

The cloud game streaming option has always been in our roadmap since the [PS Portal's] early development stage.

Wakai's promise of new features echoes what PlayStation co-CEO Hideaki Nishino told the BBC back in early December 2024, when he said that Sony is adamant to continue improving the PS Portal. Although the company has yet to share any official sales figures, Circana's market report for September 2024 estimated that approximately 3% of stateside PS5 owners bought the PS Portal. This projection suggests the device sold roughly 650,000 units in the U.S. alone within its first 10 months on the market. The recently added ability to stream games without a PS5 is likely to make the PS Portal even more compelling to prospective buyers.

Even if the PS5 accessory maintains its strong year-one momentum moving forward, it's still dubious whether Sony will eventually entertain the idea of a direct successor. According to a late November 2024 report from Bloomberg, PlayStation is currently working on another standalone handheld device in the vein of the PS Vita, which would be capable of playing PS5 games. Since such a gadget would inevitably have the hardware capabilities for cloud streaming, it could end up replacing the PS Portal should it ever be commercialized.

Posted: Jan 01, 2025 10:10 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: https://gamerant.com/sony-playstation-portal-new-features-hiromi-wakai-plans/