Yes they are lazy.... Are you fucking serious?
Edit: how can you say PS Portal isn't lazy, but own a GPD Win 4 my man? You literally know better from first hand experience?
The product isn't "lazy", it's just not up to scratch considering its landscape of contemporaries. You can say the direction of the product is missing the mark, but I still say that falls under market research laziness/cash grab mentality from PS staff.
Yes, I have a Win 4, and Max 2, and an Odin, and a Steam Deck, plus more. However, what I've found it just that I don't want any more "do-it-all" devices. Sure, The Portal might be a bit limited and PS now streaming would be great, and I hope it's coming, especially if you can stream any game you own from the cloud even if it's not on the service, (but I have no interest in cloud streaming at all, even with my low-ping fibre broadband... it's nothing than a curios IMO) the point is, I'm growing increasingly interested in dedicated devices that do dedicated things and are honed and refined toward specific tasks; which is what the PlayStation Portal appears to be and with this outlook on the device, PlayStation might have a winner on their hands if they can get the loca streaming stability rock solid and latency down to the bare minimum.
With practically all the other devices I own, I feel that I suffer from option paralysis. Take the Steam Deck for example... I spent untold hours messing around with emulation, getting emudeck and emulation station all set up with hundreds of games... but in the end, I'm not that interested in playing any of them as I have all the original hardware anyway and I have a deep distrust of the accuracy of the experience I am getting through software emulation. Something always just feels off the deeper I go into the types of games I enjoy, like racing and action. For example, Ridge Racer 2 on PPSSPP... When I play on PSP or VITA, I can get through the EX Tours no problem, but on the SD, I was playing for almost an hour on one event and I couldn't get passed it. I played it again on my VITA and passed it on my third try. It could be down to the familiarity with the controls, but something just almost always feels
off when I emulate and I can't put my finger on it. I believe it's to do with frame pacing, but I can't be certain. So outside of emulation, what's the point of all these handhelds? Almost every review you see of these handhelds puts so much emphasis on emulation, but for me, while emulation is good for preservation only, but for actual gaming, I have practically zero interest in software emulation. So after emulation, what's left? Native games of course! and that is exactly the point of the Portal. I have big library of Digital PS games that I just never stream to any of the devices for various reasons but the chief reason being that I feel like I'm missing out on the haptics, so PS streaming through Chiaki with any other device is sub-par IMO.
The Win 4, as I mentioned in another thread, I never really use at all - it's simply too uncomfortable for my hands.
The Max 2 I just put it up for sale today cos it's literally collecting dust.
The Odin Pro is a lovely device and I'm going to keep it as my only decent Android device. I had the option of a €269 Odin 2 Pro just staring at me when I got the secret super early bird code, but I didn't even bother. I thought to myself that I would honestly prefer the Portal or a second Steam Deck than another Odin that I know I won't use.
What I am a huge fan of also is local streaming through sunlight/moonlight. This setup using my 5800X3D + 3080 for PC games and productivity apps anywhere in my building is spectacular because I have absolute faith in my wired LAN and wifi router setup and want that same thing feeling but for my PS5. People saying you can use your phone with a backbone or other similar solutions are missing the point I believe. Yes, you can do something similar with a phone or Steam Deck, but it's inherently a non-native experience and is not a good substitute for native on-device gaming or streaming from PC which offers practically a 1:1 experience, but even in this case, there is a tonne of friction, from turning on the device and loading the app, and waiting, and the interfaces aren't really geared for quick pickup and play. Whereas the experience that the Portal is going is said to just connect almost instantly; you turn on the device, PS5 wakes up and you're in. No messing around or the potential to be distracted by something else when all you want to do is just connect to the PS5.
Having said all that, I'm still not 100% sold on the Portal. I really wish it had an OLED display or video-out capability through DisplayPort Alt-mode so I can use it with a pair of AR glasses when the time calls for it, but I am definitely interested in it. The DualSense is uber comfortable and if it can just achieve everything it sets out to achieve in offering an instant Portal into my PS5 without too many gotchas, there's an exceedingly high chance I'm going to take the plunge.
tl;dr,I literally don't want another jack-of-all-trades device.
