PlayStation Portal Sales Continue to Prove Naysayers Wrong
- Thread starter Fenton
- Start date
Just to give my experience when Portal was announced…
I used more Vita to remote play Destiny inside my own home than as standalone game machine (I played like Persona 4 Golden and some Trails of the Sky games in the Vita itself).
So since start I could see it use.
Even so I still preferred a standalone portable with remote play capabilities like Vita.
But having a preference doesn’t mean I did not like Portal at all.
PS. Portal is one of the reasons I will buy Switch 2 as a complementary portable… I don’t believe Sony will ever release a portable again.
I used more Vita to remote play Destiny inside my own home than as standalone game machine (I played like Persona 4 Golden and some Trails of the Sky games in the Vita itself).
So since start I could see it use.
Even so I still preferred a standalone portable with remote play capabilities like Vita.
But having a preference doesn’t mean I did not like Portal at all.
PS. Portal is one of the reasons I will buy Switch 2 as a complementary portable… I don’t believe Sony will ever release a portable again.
Nishino already said they're looking to add cloud. I think they don't have a working android cloud streamer.
Why have PC Streaming, but no other options? Seems like a resource and solution delivery problem.
I think they'd much rather you buy a Portal, subscribe to PS+, and buy your games without having to sell you a PS5 at a loss.
They've got to hire more engineers. The amount of time it took them to get Portal working with wifi that requires a splash screen was entirely too long for example.
A lot of people seem to enjoy the option of playing on their backs like complete degenerates, which I respect.
Yes, the best selling accesory of the year and as I remember Sony said it's performing ahead of their expectations.
Let's hope this means they'll upgrade its firmware soon to add cloud PS gaming support in addition to an option to connect it directly to the console for Remote Play instead of only having the current option of doing remote play via the router (and maybe internet).
Looking forward to also seeing a potential next gen successor, which I assume would potentially also natively play PC PSN games.
Let's hope this means they'll upgrade its firmware soon to add cloud PS gaming support in addition to an option to connect it directly to the console for Remote Play instead of only having the current option of doing remote play via the router (and maybe internet).
Looking forward to also seeing a potential next gen successor, which I assume would potentially also natively play PC PSN games.
You can play Ps5 anywhere in your house, and anywhere in the world where you have solid Wi-Fi. I feel like it’s easy to understand the appeal. I used the Wii U game pad more than my tv for that console.
In my experience the latency is hardly noticeable & you’re only sacrificing resolution to achieve it.
Genuine question for those who wish Sony just made a handheld, would you be happy to see SIE split resources around different platforms again? Because one of the advantages of PS4 (especially late gen) is that all of Sony’s internal studios were on deck with just the console, nothing else. How would you feel if the next title from Naughty Dog was exclusive to a handheld device? Even Nintendo could not sustain that anymore.
I keep seeing people push this idea that makes absolutely zero sense. It's so reminiscent of thicc saying the PSVR2 PC support would be streaming.
Why would sony limit their handheld to PC games? Even if they had their own store and the handheld exclusively played games from that store, it still wouldn't make any sense.
There is absolutely no reason they wouldn't have it play console games and yet so many people are repeating this.
I think somehow people think Sony is going to emulate the Steam Deck rather than the Switch and these people are greatly mistaken on the market for both of these devices.
To make dedicated games or ports for a handheld nowadays cost basically the same than for a home console. Meaning, they require a lot of resources and are very expensive. And if you aren't Nintendo, games don't sell enough to make that money back.
For that reason, the little big devs/publishers who supported PSP, Vita or Switch quickly moved away. Even Sony moved away. So isn't likely to make the same mistake again.
A PC handheld is different: they don't require to make games or ports for them, you simply put there a PC game. So don't require to spend resources and money on the catalog, just need to have PC games/ports. PC games/ports that already are profitable with the money made in the normal PCs.
And if they leave it open to install other OS (as did in PS3), you can install games from other stores and emulators. That means having a way bigger catalog than Swich, or Vita, or any portable console they can make.
And well, in a PC you can easily emulate Android too, so they can put there their future mobile games too. And obviously Sony's cloud gaming and Remote Play.
It would also provide more value to their PC PSN store and their PC ports: being able to play them on Sony's portable (in case it isn't open to install other OS, assuming that like PS5 it's a mostly a PC but is limited to a custom Linux) could be a reason to buy their PC games on Sony's PC PSN store instead of in Steam.
And well, there's a nascent PC handheld market there, with Steam/Valve, Epic and MS positioning themselves before costs go down enough to allow it making it something mainstream. So it's time for Sony to innovate and position themselves there asap to dominate that market before somebody else does it.
Doing so Sony wouldn't not only would fight them, but would also confront Nintendo. A Sony portable would help shrink Nintendo's market share not only in portable but also for Japan and also benefiting indirectly Sony's home console, specially if Sony is smart enough of making their PC PSN store crossbuy with console and mobile PSN.
Doing so, Sony's PC handheld would be the middle point that would unify their console, PC and mobile strategies via a single PSN for all the platforms.
A Sony portable console instead of a PC handheld would be a big mistake that would quickly die due to lack of 1st and 3rd party support.
That's not actually true. You're conflating a lot of different things here. Particularly the cost of porting a PS4/5 game to Switch.
The reality is that games are far more scalable now.
No one is talking about dedicated games, but ports are far easier and cheaper now. There is nothing inherently cheaper about porting a game to PC and optimizing for a specific SKU than it would be to optimize for a handheld's SKU.
The game still needs to be ported to PC first and then still needs to be scaled down to work on specific hardware. You really don't know what you're talking about here. You're conflating compiling against a specific OS and optimization against hardware.
You'll notice that Sony didn't leave the PS4 or PS5 open and its because it results in piracy and the last thing they want is other stores where they aren't making any money from on their system that they'd almost certainly have to sell at a loss or near cost.
It doesn't add any more value than it would to a PS PSN Store. With the exception that you'd have far fewer games in your library.
A market significantly smaller than the handheld market and for good reason, retailers aren't interested in it. The PC handheld market isn't going to grow against a Switch 2 and a Sony handheld.
You've made up a ridiculous fiction here.
A PlayStation portable console that plays the same games as PS4 and PS5 and only requires de-scaling just like Ps5 Pro requires enhancing would not lack 1st and 3rd party support, quite the contrary.
Yes, its over wifi, steam deck has a much worse screen and feels much worse in the hand
Well. Just bought a Steam Deck OLED anyway.
I'm going with Steam Deck + PS5 (possibly PS5 Pro) as my combo, feels like the best of both worlds.
I'm selling my PC, feels like a waste to have a work PC + gaming only PC when I hardly have time to use it, hopefully with the Steam Deck I'll use it more.
Of course it's true, I work as gamedev since almost 20 years ago and know many people who are working or worked in many places ranging from top AAA to small indies (an a few examples, the ones running a studio that back then only made handheld games for Sony and whose feedback contributed to how Vita was, or the one running another that only made games for Nintendo portables until needed to go multi the previous generation), so I know the costs and the reasons of why many of them don't support Nintendo (or moved to multi), portables or even in the case of Sony why they did stop supporting portables.
Since decades ago by definition PC (unlike console) games have been scalable, but modern PC handhelds are the first ones to have horsepower enough to be capable of featuring basically all current day big ass AAA games. And more importantly, without needing any porting job.
Any home or portable console with a dedicated OS, even if like PS or Xbox they essentially feature PC hardware, only works with its own dedicated games and ports. Even if has similar hardware to PS4 or PS5 but with really minor changes. Meaning, resources or money. Not in the case of a PC handheld, because the PC ones would just work there.
I'm a gamedev who worked in over 40 published games, who is now working on a Game Boy game, a VR game, a PC+console+mobile+arcade game, a console+PC+arcade game plus mentoring multiple external indie games. You're the one who has no idea what you're talking about, not me.
Yes, there's something cheaper: what I said, to don't need to port it for a handheld because those handhelds basically have hardware equivalent to current popular PC destktop hardware and passes the typical minimum PC specs of the games. Meaning, a PC game that runs decently enough in low/mid tier PC desktop hardware specs just works in these portables.
The only thing that the game needs is to support gamepad controls and to have a minimum text font size big enough to be readable in those screens. No porting or extra optimization required.
Nowadays almost all companies (including MS and Sony, being Nintendo one of the few exceptions) already port their games to PC because the desktop PC is a big enough market they need, and the PC handhelds are a submarket inside PC. They don't port a game to PC to have a handheld version: their business is PC as a whole, mostly desktop. To get the PC handheld version is something that is essentially free when having a decently scalable PC game.
The reason of why Sony doesn't leave their consoles open is because they want a revenue cut from all games running there, so they don't allow other stores there. That (with a small extra help from PC and mobile via other stores) they have enough revenue and profit. But they will want to continue growing, so at some point they'll want to have their only PC and mobile PSN stores.
And once they open their PSN stores for PC an mobile, they'll want people from these platforms, including those in the different PC handhelds, to buy their games there.
I assume initially will want to release their PC handheld only featuring their own store/games, but I think that whenever their release their portable (maybe 4-5 years from now, around a year after PS6 release as PS Player next gen successor) all the other PC handheld competitors will feature multiple stores and OS, so to be fully featured Sony will end -maybe after launch- allowing to install other OS.
PC is a bigger market in terms of userbase and revenue than PS, so it has more value.
Specifically for Sony, PS is an already huge market for them and doesn't need extra help, meanwhile their PC business, despite being very profitable and to keep growing very fast, has way more room and potential to grow.
If a first generation of that device gives them let's say 10-20M new users that would mean a bigger % increase for their PC business -just because it's smaller- than to their console business.
On top of that, in a few years pretty likely PS will have the home console market basically just for themselves, with almost no competition, with Nintendo focused mostly on handhelds and MS full multiplatform leaving their console hardware mostly to 3rd parties. But instead in PC they'll have a lot of competition of many stores, for 3rd parties mainly Steam.
So it would be smarter to use that potential handheld to support more directly their growing PC business because it would need it more than their console business, which already mostly reached its full potential.
Sony and the 3rd parties know that all non-Nintendo portable consoles, with PSP as exception, failed to generate a big enough market to make games and ports profitable for them. In case of Nintendo devices, their 3rd party sales since the N64 have been too small for many publishers to fully support them with their AAA games.
PC handhelds don't have these issues of needing to generate a big enough catalog and userbase to make their games or ports profitable, because their games and stores aren't limited to them: they are normal PC games, and these publishers and storefront ownsers already are already happy with their desktop PC business, handheld PCs are just an extra for them.
Having the games catalog and profitability issue sorted indirectly with the desktop PC market, PC handhelds manufacturers only need to focus on keeping hardware side sustainable and reasonable: not too expensive to make it appealing to the biggest amount possible of players, not too cheap to avoid losing a lot of money per unit.
In the players side, being PC means they have a huge catalog: they don't have the issue of portable consoles not featuring enough games, including most of the most popular ones like GTA, FIFA, AC, CoD and so on: they'll be there.
Portable PS4 and PS5 hardware are they fiction here: they don't exist, would be too expensive and would require dedicated games/ports like the Vita or Switch because the hardware can't be 100% the same.
PC handhelds aren't a fiction, they already exist and feature most PS4 and PS5 games. By the time Sony would release their next portable device (maybe 2027-2030, around PS6 launch or a year later or two?) they already will have ported to PC all their PS4 and PS5 games -plus some PS3 ones- that they consider with potential to continue selling decently in modern times.
We don't know it, only Sony has the real worldwide sales.
NPD and their clients have NPD's sales estimate -which should be super close to the real number- for that specific market, but the only think they shared publicly is that it's the top selling accesory of the month and the year.
There may be sales of some way smaller country out there, which wouldn't be relevant and representative of global performance. USA at least is the biggest country for the console market and its behavior is somewhat relatively representative of the rest.
