Sony officially confirmed the new PlayStation teased last night, and now a new rumor claims the 8-inch device will arrive in November. The claim comes from Tom Henderson, the same reporter who detailed Sony’s Project Q move last month.
“Currently scheduled for release mid-late November 2023,” Henderson said In a tweet this morning. Sony hasn’t announced pricing or the exact release of late yet, only revealing that the PlayStation Portable will launch “later this year.”
Sony’s PlayStation Portable, known only as Project Q for now, will allow PS5 owners to stream games to an 8-inch LCD that includes controllers on either side very similar to a DualSense PS5 controller. Games won’t run locally on the device, which means you’ll need to install them on your PS5 and have a good Wi-Fi connection to stream them.
Sony hasn’t said if you’ll be able to use the PlayStation Portable outside your home, but presumably you’ll be able to use Sony’s Remote Play technology to access PS5 games on the go.
Sony is clearly responding to the rise of mobile gaming in recent years. The Nintendo Switch has dominated modern handheld consoles and Valve’s Steam Deck showed what’s possible for PC gaming on the go. Whether or not the PlayStation Portable is a success will come down to whether people are willing to spend money on a device that is only limited to streaming PS5 games.
It’s already possible to stream PS5 games on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android, so there are definitely questions about who exactly this one is for. The adaptive triggers are a nice touch, but it certainly seems like you can get by with the rest with the many mobile devices and existing control options.
Sony might expand this PlayStation Portable to cloud streaming given recent job listings that hint at a new push for cloud gaming, which would certainly make sense after PlayStation boss Jim Ryan laid out “very aggressive plans” for cloud gaming earlier this week. But even with cloud streaming options, there’s still a big question mark over whether PS5 owners will want a handheld PlayStation that can’t play offline games.
Logitech has tried something similar at an outrageous price, so Sony’s success may come down to whether it’s ready to stream PlayStation games over the cloud and the price of this portable PlayStation. Some people (including edge Managing Editor Alex Cranz) argues that the phone is terrible for cloud gaming and wants custom hardware, so we’ll see how the market responds.
Sony says we’ll get additional details about Project Q in the coming months.
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