The PlayStation Portal has been met with raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders among enthusiasts in the West, but it seems as though Japan is very much onboard with the Remote Play handheld. Pre-orders for the device recently went live at various retailers, and over in Sony's homeland, demand is reportedly high; PS Portal is sold out basically everywhere.
Reports are coming in from social media that all online shops in the country are fresh out of Portal pre-orders. Genki says they sold out in about 12 hours:
PS Portal is a device launching this November that essentially lets you play your PS5 away from the TV via Remote Play. So long as your console and your Portal have access to WiFi, you can remotely connect to your PS5 and play whatever you like. Obviously it's reliant on the speed of the connection, but as we know, Japan's gaming tastes lean towards portable play, so it makes a lot of sense for this to be selling well over there.
Unfortunately we don't know any numbers, and as Genki points out, it's possible a portion of these pre-orders have gone to scalpers. However, given Japan's aforementioned enthusiasm for handheld games, it remains an encouraging sign that the device has sold out across the board.
In the US and UK, it's a slightly different story. Amazon US seems to have sold out at the time of writing, but a number of other retailers in the US and UK seem to still have some pre-orders left.