Is The PlayStation Portal Worth A Purchase? - GameInformer
Sony's new portable player is out today. Its potential value has a lot to do with your home gaming habits.
No
I got mine today, and whilst the layout takes a small amount of time to get used to, I find it pretty intuitive and easy to use. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but as someone who regularly loses the battle for the TV, this is hands-down a great purchase for me. Otherwise I’d have to use my phone, which is annoying as I have to disconnect my controller and connect it to my phone, and the screen is too small, or my laptop which is a bit too cumbersome. The Portal hits the sweet spot for me, it may not be for everyone, but I’m part of that niche that will use it regularly.
EDIT: My other gripe is the lack of being able to play through the cloud - I hope this is something to be added in the future as it’s literally just a WiFi controller with a screen.
I recently got the G Cloud for the same reason. I'm sitting in the same room as my playstation, not allowed to exist in the other room all night or my wife feels like I'm mad at her, and don't always want to sit and binge tv with her. Now I can us PSPlay and Steam Link to play games from my PS5 and gaming PC while sitting on the living room with her. It's not as nice an experience as playing on a full sized screen with a lighter controller and no occasional connectivity issues, but it beats not being able to play at all. Been using it all the time.
Literally the Wii U rehashed lol.
Still useful.
At least the pad was included with the wii u.
Nintendoland was THE shit tho.
The problem with the Wii U wasn't the concept. It was the execution. The idea of a portable handheld console is a sound one, it's just not a universal need. Making your console dependent on a niche feature and only having like 2 exclusive launch titles and bunch of third party ports is not going to compel people to buy a whole new console, especially when everyone and their grandma already owns your previous console that had hundreds of games available on it. I bought one with my brother mostly so I could play Breath of the Wild when it was impossible to buy a market price Switch. It's perfectly fine as a console and I used the portable mode on occasion. It just doesn't have a lot of other reasons to exist.
While I have loved the innovation of Sony over the years, this one is a little odd. If Sony had thought about this, they would have realised that most people these days already have a viable handheld device, a smartphone. Microsoft got that one right by making remote play work so well on most mobile devices with connection to a pad. I just feel Sony should have done the same.
That said, I get there are some benefits if you have a shared screen and cannot always get on your PS5 but is that worth the money? I am not too sure.
Still, this is the early days and Sony will likely have a bigger vision for it. I mean, being able to connect to any network and play games remotely would be a huge step.
100% agree and am baffled at the lack of remote play for any network, since that’s something that would make this product a lot more worthwhile, though still at a premium I can’t see many people paying for.
Maybe with a jailbreak
Nope