Topic: PlayStation Portal -OT-

@Th3solution oh f***, yes. My bad 🤦‍♂️ I was looking at the console streaming for owned games and thought it was now available to cloud stream them anywhere. They should add it in the future though, and I'm half expecting a V2 edition to launch at some point along with that functionality advertised at launch. Keep an eye out for a new batch (or at least a wave of new promotion) when they move out of beta, I guess. As, in terms of advertising, they would definitely want to sing from the heavens what it is capable of, once it is classed as a full fledged feature.

I'm kind of glad it isn't in the sale now, as I'd have got one and tried to stream games I owned with the console off, or games not installed, and got a shock 😂

@Th3solution @Ravix I've no idea how streaming games you own directly to the Portal without the ps5 switched on could work for physical games you owned - it needs the disc to verify you still own the game. But it'd probably be quite easy for Sony to implement this for digitally owned games.
Maybe that's what a future update will be, and another way of pushing more people to abandon discs.

@Ravix Yeah, I do wonder about a Portal 2 coming out at some point. Releasing it in conjunction with the beta finishing and going into full release with PSN purchases included would be a smart move. Probably an OLED screen too.

@Herculean Yes! And it works really well on the Portal, it having been designed for PSP and all. The streaming was mostly stable too, although every now and then for whatever reason the service just has a bad day and it lags more, but the majority of the time it was stable for a game like Crisis Core.

@MatthewJP Yes, there’s the rub - I suspect they would never make it possible to cloud stream something you own on a disc. It will be one more nail in the coffin for physical. I am still an advocate for physical, but if it came to that where owning the digital copy made it possible to cloud stream onto the Portal, it would sway my decision, depending on the game.
There are some games that are just not ideal on the Portal, regardless, so those are certainly still physical disc purchases for me. Also, the price would still be a factor. If I can save 30% off the cost of buying a game digitally, I would still go physical even if it means I can’t cloud stream it.

Elden Ring Nightreign is going to get used to on my portal.

Anyone played any MMORPG on the ps portal like Black Desert Online PS5 version and Final Fantasy XIV Online?

@PlaystationPortalFan Playing FFXIV on the Portal is a brilliant idea. Never really thought of that, but being able to play a MMORPG in bed, makes it more likely for me to play it at all. I should look up its current price.

As one of the resident Portal enthusiasts, I should drop some early impressions after the recent huge Portal update —

Overall, I’d say it’s been wonderful. I’ve spent about 6 hours with the unit over the last couple days and so these thoughts are definitely not battle tested, but I’m pleased so far. For reference, these hours were on WiFi internet with average download speeds of 200-300 MB, with some played at home and some in public WiFi away from home.

First off, the new UI is intuitive and functional. You now horizontally scroll through three screens, one for remote play to connect to your PS5, one for cloud streaming, and one a search screen. On the cloud streaming screen there’s a large tile for “stream from your collection” and a separate tile for “stream from PS+ library” (or some labels similar to that, I’m not in front of my Portal atm). When I clicked on the one to select from my own digital library, it immediately pulled up a list of my games which are available to cloud stream. It includes PS+ games I’ve claimed, as well as digital purchases, so the list is very large.

I immediately went to the game I’ve been playing, Baldur’s Gate 3. After clicking on it the standard streaming load screen immediately popped up and after a few seconds I saw the splash screen for Larian studios, just as if I were loading the game from my PS5. From there, loading the game took about the same amount of time it takes to load when booting it up from the console, which I was really surprised with. My saves were all present, pulling from my cloud saves (which I have all my games auto-upload to the cloud, of course) so loading my progress was simple and exactly as if I were sitting on the couch in front of my PS5. The game save loaded up and there I was at Sorcerous Sundries in Act 3 where I left off the day before.

At first I got a fair amount of lag and stuttering as graphics sometimes loaded onto the screen late as I moved around. During my first 5 minutes I thought “eh, this might not really work well on AAA games with a huge game file like this” but after a few minutes, the stuttering smoothed out and it started to feel responsive and graphically clean. It remained so for the duration of that play session (about an hour). On my next play session when I loaded up the game it didn’t take a few minutes to “catch up” and load on the background like that and I was in a smooth experience from the start, so I’m not sure if that was just a bit of internet bad luck at first or if the initial launch of a game takes time for the cloud to preload stuff in some kind of personal queue (I’m very ignorant of how these things work and the technology behind streaming). When streaming movies I sometimes get a lag at first and the picture quality is poor for the first few seconds or minutes while it loads, so perhaps it can be the same with a large game too. But I’ve probably loaded up BG3 four or five times for small game sessions since then and it’s been pretty smooth from the start each time. Given how large the game is I’m quite impressed. It really did feel close to the experience of playing on the TV, although sacrificing the large scale 4K graphics, of course. But on the small screen in 1080p it still looks pretty nice most of the time. I have been in the one Sorcerous Sundries area the whole time so I’m curious if I will get screen tearing and frame drops in the really busy sections of the city like I do when I’m on console, or if it will be even worse. We’ll see.

Of course the responsiveness and input lag is going to be a big question, and in a turn based game like BG3 any lag was usually imperceptible and if present, inconsequential. Occasionally I would click an action and there would be a millisecond delay before it triggered. So definitely not perfect.

On that subject, the other game I’ve been cloud streaming on the Portal is Dark Pictures: Man of Medan. Ironically it has fared worse than BG3. It would seem a good one for the Portal, but I’m pretty sure I failed a couple QTE’s due to the lag. It could have been my own poor reaction time, but I doubt it. So it was a bummer to experience that where I didn’t know if I actually failed the moment or not, but either way, I did and it ended up affecting the outcome of my story, obviously. So narrow window timing actions are probably still going to be a problem with cloud streaming, depending on the internet speed and stability, I presume. But 90% of Man of Medan was perfectly fine, including many QTE’s that I passed without issue. I wouldn’t be opposed to playing another QTE heavy game on it in the future, but we’ll see. I definitely am still doubtful that Souls games or others that are punishing for missing an input (like Silksong, etc) are worth the gamble of a random lag at an inopportune moment.

For me, the other downside is that a lot of my backlog is on physical disc (FF7 Rebirth, Death Stranding 2, HFW, etc) so that negates cloud streaming a large portion of my library, unless I were to repurchase those games digitally (which honestly, for large time-sinks, I might just be willing to do that if I have a long trip ahead or something). Also, some of my digital library is not streamable, unfortunately. For example KCD is not available to stream, although KCD2 is. I suspect some of the older games may never get the streaming treatment.

Anyway, there you have it. Anyone else tried the new update?

Tagging @Ravix who was wondering about my thoughts on it.

I'm so close to pulling the trigger on one of these. However, I am a bit apprehensive on the button latency side of performance. It would be great to be able to successfully play some action games that require good button latency, but I'm scared it could be a bit of a lottery. My home internet is approx 2GB with decent strong wifi signal strength thoughtout, but I would still be at the mercy of that added on top of how quick the game comes down the wire from PlayStation.

@bowzoid I played Lords of the Fallen on mine while on a weekend spa. So it was a pretty demanding game in terms of action gameplay. The resort I was staying at was about 20 miles away from my home PS5, which was connected via a wired connection and I was using the hotel wireless with the portal.

I probably played around 7/8 hours altogether across the three day weekend and with the exception of two instances of dropped Wi-Fi, it ran beautifully. Hardly any lag detected, which I was amazed about. It was just like having my PS5 on the trip!

@bowzoid Yeah, my impressions of my time with it that I posted above were in regards to the cloud streaming where I have a slight reluctance to endorsing it for an input-timing dependent game.

When used in the remote play setting with the Portal tethered to your PS5 and provided your PS5 is Ethernet connected to your router, you’ll likely have a very stable experience with your setup, and you won’t be at the mercy or PlayStation releasing it to the cloud. In its remote play mode, it’s merely mirroring your PS5, so if a game can be played on your PS5, it can be played on the Portal. Even a physical disc game. Your console will just have to be turned on at the time.

@Th3solution cheers. (Just going through some of my notifications now)

I'm still a little apprehensive of actually getting one myself, maybe as the Switch is in the console graveyard at the moment, as the novelty of that wore off pretty quickly here.

If they were to make a v2, or combine it with PS6 handheld or whatever, what would be some of your feature wishes, as a current user, for things you'd like to see next?

For me: an oled screen, detachable side panels so you can replace them (or use a dualsense controller while it is in a stand (or a docked mode) would start to make it a must own device. I could easily replace the secondary PS5 that gets much less use and then get the bonus of handheld when required. I suppose that would basically be what a switch is, but for PS and my actual game catalogue. Nintendo games never ended up appealing to me, even though I do like the core concept, I guess 🤷‍♂️

Thinking about it, I don't think I can justify 'just a handheld' at the moment, even though the streaming element has opened up the games available to me without the need to faff about mirroring the console itself.

You know, maybe I will break out the Switch as i'm going to be away for a bit so I could see if it gets any use, but I might have to accept that i'm not really a handheld gamer because I like to settle in and immerse myself when I game, and even then i've only played GoY maybe once in the past week or so anyway. So i'm also a bit in and out with my gaming as a whole.

Honestly, i'm thinking i'm still more likely to read/audiobook to chill rather than to handheld game, even if handheld is the only gaming option.

Honestly, a thought just popped into my head and it was "but Stray would be good, I could get a Portal and have access to Stray on the move" but then it was instantly shut down by... "but if I play Stray again I'd want to play it sat close to a nice big Oled and marvel at the shiny shiny night-time neon environment" 🙈 I guess that shows the type of gamer I am, so I doubt I will ever change. I think I'd rather not game if the option of the fully immersive gaming set up isn't available.

I also suppose you've played more than the 6 hours since you posted, so has anything else popped up you've noticed? I feel like it fits the way you game better too, as it allows you to chill and 'hobby-multitask', which is a big part of your handheld preference.

@Ravix Yes, I have continued to use the Portal more and more even since I’ve posted that a couple days ago. Like you said, one of major use cases is ‘hobby multi-tasking’; playing a game whilst lazily watching NFL or NBA. More so NFL because of all the down time in that game, during commercials, and long half time shows. But the new update has really stretched my usage beyond that. I find that in addition to a travel companion, I’ve used it in the house when I have a smaller amount of time to play. So for example, if I have an appointment or commitment in an hour, it’s not enough time for me to turn the TV on and fire up the PS5 and get all cozy on the couch because I’ll just have to turn it off in like 45 minutes and it’s not worth the set up. But I can grab the Portal and turn it on immediately and be in a game in 2-3 minutes and turn it off quickly as well when it’s time to go. So shorter burst game sessions have been a nice application of the Portal. But that’s the time when I would normally read or scroll through the web, read a few articles, catch up on Push Square or sports news. So it’s all a balance but I like having the option.

It’s interesting that you bring up the second PS5 and I think you’re correct - the Portal is going to take some of the time away from using it. My breakdown of gaming time over the last 2 weeks has been: 60% PS5 Pro, 40% Portal, 0% second PS5. Before this update it was 75% PS5 Pro, 15% Portal, 10% second PS5. So yeah, I feel like maybe I can sell back my backup PS5, but I don’t know. I like having it just in case. I’m weird I guess.

And you’re absolutely right — the big screen OLED PS5 Pro session is hands down a superior experience from a fidelity and spectacle standpoint, as well as better gameplay performance. So I would never want to crank up Ghost of Yotei for the first time on the Portal and play the whole thing on it. For BG3, I am happy to have spent the first 170 hours playing it on the big TV, but I’ve got the whole visual wonder and marvel of the the game over many many hours and I’m perfectly content to play it on the small screen if it means I can get through it more efficiently by getting in small sessions I would have never had the time and opportunity to do before. I’ve got back to playing some Balatro on it lately, which is absolutely not in need of a 65 inch OLED display. 😂 In fact I prefer to play it on Portal instead of the TV. I’ll probably play Alan Wake mostly on Portal (but not AW2), and Nobody Wants to Die, Jusant, stuff like that. Not the big AAA games but something like Expedition 33 might be like BG3 in that I’ll start it on the big TV so I can get the full immersive effect, and then squeeze in time on it with the Portal later, since it’s turn based (although parry timing so we’ll see if it’s too latency sensitive).

It’s just similar to movies, in that you want to see the biggest spectacles in the theater, then rewatch them on your TV and then the smaller stuff you’re fine to watch on your phone like Seinfeld episodes and documentaries and whatnot. There’s a proper use scenario for each sized screen.

And your feeling on the Switch is kind of like my feelings on the Vita over time. Everytime I tried to make myself play the few games I have on it left, I always felt like I’d rather be playing PS5. So my Vita has collected dust for the last several years. The Portal however lets me keep working on my PS5 backlog whilst still being a handheld, rather than playing some other lesser games I’m not that enamored with on a proprietary device.

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As far as your first question though, what would I like for a ver. 2 or next gen iteration? Well, yeah definitely the OLED screen. Better battery life is also a must. Much like the Dualsense, with haptic triggers, vibration, and lights all enabled, it really doesn’t last very long on a full charge. I’ve never completely run the battery all in one game session but I don’t think it will last more than 3-4 hours, depending on how much the game uses haptics and tactile feedback. I tried disabling the haptic and vibration features and noticed that helped drain the battery a lot slower and so you might double your playtime by doing so, but I love that kind of stuff as it’s all part of the PS5 experience to me, so I’m willing to just charge the unit more often, and keep my rumble and clicky triggers.

Another hardware update we need is a solution for the DualSense touchpad. The double tap onto certain areas of the screen to press that is just not ideal. The only other things I can think of for them to work on are continued improvement in the streaming tech and maybe add the ability to download games onto a hard drive, which just makes it into an actual offline device which is what most of the detractors want.

Other features I’d like to have is some messaging and media capabilities, and access to screenshot library. I guess those are software things that can be implemented later though. My dream (which they’d never do) as far as firmware/system/PSN upgrades would be to somehow have access to stream my physical games from the cloud. I’ve spent money and time collecting some nice PS4 and PS5 discs, but I can’t cloud stream them, unlike my digital library. It will never happen though.