Topic: PlayStation Portal -OT-

@nomither6 Yes, the Portal streams what’s happening on the PS5 to the device - basically it mirrors your PS5. So every single game you can play on your TV with your PS5 you can play on the Portal handheld. It’s just that some games are are just better to experience on the bigger screen and the controls feel slightly different because the analog sticks are shorter, as mentioned by @LtSarge . Also there may be occasional lag, depending on your internet connection. But you can still absolutely play FPS or online games on it, but those games with fast twitch reactions and narrow windows of input and/or highly competitive are probably not ideal. I did play some Spider-Man 2 on my Portal and it worked fine and looked great but still wasn’t quite as good as on the TV, so I opted to do most of it on the big screen. Same with Dark Souls 2 — I’ve tried it on the device and it works great but I can’t risk the possibility that I get a random lag for a split second during a big boss battle. It works ok for farming runs though. Turn based games or narrative choice games (like from Supermassive, Telltale, Quantic Dream, etc) are where the Portal shines though.

Right now I’m playing a ton of Balatro on my Portal. In fact I’ve put about 35 hours into it and I’d say 80% of that has been on the Portal. Whenever I’ve played it on the TV I actually find that I’d prefer to have it in the handheld. It works perfect that way. I watched 4 hours of football and basketball today and played Balatro on my Portal simultaneously the whole time.

I'm new here and I like the playstation portal! @nomither6

@LtSarge I was reading your experience over on the other thread but figured I’d pose the question here. You’ve subscribed to PS Plus Premium and have been trying the Portal cloud streaming. I was thinking of upgrading during this BF sale and looked at the games available during the beta and when I pull up the library on the Portal it has a bunch of games which even include classic catalogue games from PS1, PSP, and also some PS4 games, as well as some native PS5 games. Are all these streamable to the Portal? The Push Square article was fairly clear that the beta was limited to PS5 games in the library. So I guess I’m a little confused — are the classics and PS4 games in that beta catalogue working on the Portal beta too?

I’m looking at games like the Legacy of Kain, Dino Crisis, and maybe trying some of the PS4 games like Outer Worlds, Night in the Woods, Hotline Miami, Judgment, Gris, …among others.

So just wondering why they specifically said the beta games are limited to select PS5 games?

@Th3solution I was wondering that myself as I browsed through the selection of games. But yeah as far as I can see, they are all playable. I just booted up Dino Crisis and The Outer Worlds just to make sure and yeah, they are fully playable. So I don't know why they said that only select PS5 games would be available. Maybe they meant select games on PS5 that support cloud streaming?

Anyway, I've been playing Soulstice nonstop on Portal since yesterday. It's just so easy to pick up and play a game now on the device. Although I have noticed that the stream does jitter sometimes when you play a game through the cloud instead of through remote play on your PS5, but it's not a big deal.

@LtSarge Awesome. Thanks for checking for me. I’ll probably upgrade to Premium and be checking it out within the coming days. I have some holiday travel forthcoming for which this will be a great testing ground.

@LtSarge did you definitely have your ps5 switched off when you tested that, as multiple sources say you can only play select ps5 games?

@MatthewJP I mean, it was in rest mode when I tried playing those two games through the cloud on Portal. Don't think that would've made a difference as you boot up the game through the cloud and not through the console.

But just for the sake of it, I just turned off my PS5 and booted up Dino Crisis on Portal. It works.

@LtSarge nice! Sony clearly don't know what they are talking about

@LtSarge @MatthewJP

So the Portal got a patch the other day and it looks like the catalogue of games you can stream with PS+ Premium was updated with the Sly Cooper and Jak & Daxter games that were added earlier this month. I think it's cool if Sony is going to update the device with more games every month, albeit a bit annoying that it has to be an update every time as it can take some time for it to install.

@LtSarge Hmmm, I hope that the addition of new games won’t require an update every time. It’s not like the update is an awful thing, but it does take a few minutes and the whole point of the Portal is the convenience factor. But I have a feeling that the update was more about tweaking some features and improving stability of the streaming beta. I suspect that they could add games to the streaming catalogue without doing a firmware update. Hopefully.

What are you playing on your Portal nowadays? I haven’t had much time for gaming this week but I think I’m going to try my hand at streaming FF7 Crisis Core. Since the game was originally a PSP game then I figure it will fit well on the handheld.

@Th3solution I'm still playing Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. I'm about 90 hours into the game but I reckon I'll wrap it up soon. It's great to play a long game on a handheld. After that, I'm not sure what I want to play. I'm kinda in a mood to play a visual novel, which is a perfect type of game to play on a handheld.

Crisis Core on Portal sounds like a good idea. I tested out FF7 Remake on Portal briefly and it feels fitting as well.

Sonic and Forspoken have appeared streamable on the Portal today without requiring an update

@MatthewJP Ah, good to know. Thanks, mate.

@MatthewJP Thanks for confirming that an update isn't necessary.

@xeofate I also played Control on Portal earlier this year when I played through the game. It worked well on the device.

Currently playing Alan Wake 2 and using my Portal to play it when putting my kids to bed or breaks during the day. Love it.

I'm also thinking of trying Infinity Nikki on it. I feel like the device made for these type of cozy games

Now there's game streaming can you do that without first booting the primary PS5? Is there a seperate portal log in/OS now, or is having the PlayStation on a requirement still?

And how has the game streaming been for bugs etc?

@Ravix So when you turn on your Portal, you'll have the option of choosing either PS5 remote play or cloud streaming if you have PS+ Premium. When you click on the latter, you'll get access to a library of games without connecting to your PS5. You just need a PSN account.

I didn't notice any issues with the streaming quality when I last played.

@LtSarge cheers! Yes, I've streamed some games to my PS5 without downloading before when I first tried premium, so assume it's pretty similar function and quality to that, then. Very cool that it can be fully launched from the Portal itself without the PS5 being on though.

I can't work out if I'm tempted yet, as when I bought a switch I bought 2 games and then got bored with the damn thing 😅 but being able to use my current PS catalogue and PS Premium streaming maybe gives it a better chance.

I have Pathfinder:WotR and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales both installed on PS, for example, but feel like I'm never going to play them on a tv, so that is maybe in Portal's favour for streaming from my console

I'll have to check the catalogue of Plus Premium games that fully cloud stream without the console on though. Can you also stream games that you own via the cloud system if it knows your account owns them on PS5? That would be a godly feature

@Ravix Unfortunately no, you can't stream your own games. Although I reckon that'd be another feature they might add in the future to the Portal as there was one article on Push Square where Sony said there will be more significant updates added to the device in the future.

I can say that I'm seriously so glad that I bought the Portal considering how many long PS4 games I've bought years ago that I regret buying for that system as I wanted the portability aspect of the Switch. But with the PS5, I now get that aspect with the Portal. Games like Thronebreaker like you mentioned or others like Final Fantasy 10, Skyrim and more. I'm glad now that I'm playing them on PlayStation as they look so much better, not to mention that certain games aren't even available on Switch like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, which I also recently played a lot on the Portal.

But it all depends on if you like playing on a portable device. I like being in bed playing a game a lot of times so the device is perfect for me.