PS Portal Still a Huge Success as Sony Reportedly Preps PS6 Handheld

Love my Portal. Haven't used it lately - because I've only been playing Silksong on the big TV - but as soon as I move on to my next turn-based RPG or indie game, I'll be back on the Portal regularly.

It’s great for playing Indy games in bed before sleep.

I watch sports and play my portal. Best of both worlds.

I’ve been tempted but…I have no use for it. All my gameplay is on my tv, I hardly ever even use my Switch as a portable.

More power to those enjoying theirs, though!

I use my Portal for the PlayStation Plus Premium cloud streaming and so far its been flawless. Without the need for the PS5 to be on (or even own one if you don't want) it's like it's a standalone console.

If the attach rate holds for worldwide then that's around 4m sales. Interesting fact, since the portal release date the combined sales of series x and series S is around 8m, so the portal may have literally outsold the series X over the period it's been available.

Wait, does that mean over 4 million PS Portals have been sold? Or am i reading this wrong? Cause that’s actually a lot!

Still planning on getting one

I was in the market for one after my buddy told me how much he liked his, but I slapped a new Bluetooth controller onto the iPad mini we already had in the house and saved myself a bunch of money. Wasn't willing to go all in for a streaming-only device when I don't use it all that frequently as a function.

Excited for the 6's rumored handheld, though!

Use my portal more than I do tv. It’s a great device

@LogicStrikesAgain it's 5% of America's sales only not PS5 sales in total globally.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised to see it have an higher attach rate in Europe.

@UltimateOtaku91 Ah, i did read it wrong, thanks for clarifying! That makes sense. I wonder what the attachment rate in the rest of the world is

Always great when things succeed despite what depressed malcontents say!

Still think if they carried on with PSP it would have sold well especially during the PS4 gen

It wasn't easy to set up settings (port forwarding and all that stuff) but once done, the Portal experience is simply flawless. Much better than everyone thought when the device was announced, Sony did really well.

While I'd call a 5% attach rate successful for a niche peripheral, it doesn't really seem like the kinda success to justify designing your next-gen hardware family around an expanded version. Pretty sure if it wasn't for the Switch, Steam Deck, etc. existing, there would be no PlayStation handheld on its way regardless of this figure.

And maybe the attach rate is higher in other territories — who knows. I kinda doubt it; maybe Europe is a little higher, but that's all I can imagine. But still, it would make more sense, to me, to just keep making the Portal and advertise its compatibility with the future PS6 with those numbers.

Me personally, I have a Pixel Tablet stood up right next to my TV if I need a 'portal' to my PS5. Sony's recent update giving the Dualsense 4 connection signatures has made remote play easier than ever (thank you, Sony). But, ya know...I still just play on my Switch 99% of the time I'm playing off-TV.

I’ve never seen one in real life

I can grab one of these from a buddy for £70 quid. Nearly had it last month but I had car issues.

@UltimateOtaku91 Just curious, why would you assume the attach rate would be higher in Europe? Aren't sales in general lower for video game things compared to the US at least? Sorry if that's incorrect I'd just always seen older statistics show that US has higher sales & gaming revenue than Europe

I use my steamdeck. It's probably not quite as good but works. Not buying a portal even though I'd be very happy to get for Christmas.

If I still had my old job, which involved WFH and a lot of "hurry up and wait", I would totally buy a portal. Alas...right now I just don't have the need.

@yohn777 Just by Europe being Playstations biggest market, so I would assume the attach would be higher, hopefully we get some stats soon.

Don't get me wrong the portal can be great when it works and doesn't keep disconnecting. I have the fastest ISP provider in the UK and the portal still has a mind of tis own sometimes. From a junior developers point of view, I would of thought getting a ps6 handheld device where you can actually install games right off the bat would of been more profitable, sony missed the mark for actually having another rival for Xbox and pc handhelds. I would of wanted to play last of us 2 in 1080p on ps6 handheld directly than streaming it for 720p. When ps6 handheld does release i hope it would be 1080p, hopefully oled screen, and play games at ps4 level graphics, and price point 600 pounds, that's why legion go was a huge seller, good device and good value. Legion go 2 is the greedy sibling for not much improvement. Ps6 handheld could be the quest for handhelds, reasonably price and good entry.

I mostly play on my tv, but I use my Portal as a second screen device in the evenings (mostly for strategy games).

The Rog ally X doesn't play Xbox games natively if I understand it correctly.

@UltimateOtaku91
Yes, in fact cloud streaming for me is flawless, better than local streaming by far. Not sure why, but there you go.

They just need to open up streaming games you own now and it would massively take off. There are so many of my ps4 games I could get through on this but you can stream ps4 at moment

I am a big game streamer, mostly using GeForce now ultimate which is genuinely like renting a £2500 PC for £200 per year, and without any heat, noise, electricity drain or upgrade costs. I actually prefer it over my real PC of a similar spec.

The Portal is an absolutely fantastic idea, but poorly implemented and with a middling service behind it.

A future iteration with GF Now quality levels will be incredible.

It makes me wonder why anyone would want to pay two or three times the price, for a heavier and hotter device with a fraction of the battery life, with worse graphics, just for the 1% of time they spend using it outside of a network and therefore can't stream.

The days of handheld gaming devices that have onboard processing, are numbered in my opinion.

@4fold @UltimateOtaku91 Me three, regarding the cloud streaming. When I first got my Portal I really enjoyed it when used for streaming from the PS5, but once the PS+ Premium cloud streaming was rolled out, I rarely use it for console streaming and almost exclusively cloud stream. I get a better, more stable connection usually from the cloud. Granted, my PS5 isn’t hard wired to my router and that led to some instability when streaming from the PS5, but I didn’t have a good solution to hardwire by Ethernet due to where my router and PS5 are in relation to one another. Cloud streaming fixed the issue and also has allowed me to play games while traveling either from a hotel WiFi or by using my phone’s hotspot. Works quite well.

My biggest issue is that this locks me into only being able to play games from the PS+ library on it. My one wish is that they expand the cloud streaming service to include any of the games we own in our library also. I would love that. Surely they are planning to expand to that. You can already cloud stream most of these games to the PS5 so I wonder how much harder it would be to allow us to cloud stream them to our Portal. Come on, Sony! Make it happen! I’ll buy more games digitally (as opposed to physically on disc) if they implement that.

Can’t wait to play DQ 1 and 2 HD-2D Remake on my Portal like I did 3 (:

@GMaster7 that’s what I mainly use my Portal for haha is 2D RPGs or indies

@Th3solution
My situation too (although I am hardwired and streaming is still better over the cloud). I used it for 10 days while at a work thing and it worked flawlessly while there in Southampton; tried to do similar in Birmingham though and it didn’t work. Really is down to the WiFi strength so my mileage varies. Haven’t tried it abroad as I’ve been banned from bringing it on holiday, but I guess it would work the same? Although I’m not sure if I can access my UK sub outside of the EU…

They are saying they will expand it, but this is Sony, wouldn’t surprise me if they kept in just a subscription bonus to keep people paying.

@4fold Yeah, I wonder if it would work while traveling abroad. If you haven’t tried it via your phone hotspot, you might give that a whirl the next time the existing WiFi seems insufficient. If I have at least 2 bars of 5G it seems to be perfectly fine.

In fact, as a related side note, the Portal does do a weird thing sometimes where it will intermittently disconnect from WiFi, even at home under a close stable signal, and after some online searches I saw people say something about the connection algorithm or some such and a quick fix is just to connect to an alternative WiFi signal and then connect back again to your regular WiFi and it kind of resets the connection and it’s stable after that. So I use my hotspot for those instances if I notice it disconnects then I hop onto the hotspot for a minute and then back to the home network and it’s smooth and perfect again. A guess a rebooting of the connection, of sorts. It only happens to me like once a month, or maybe less.

As someone who loves handheld gaming, I love it for its ergonomics….

@Th3solution hardwiring connection to ps5 makes all the difference in the world. There’s a few other things u can do, but that’s the biggest difference to improve performance.

If we assume the SD has sold 5 million units worldwide based on analysts. the numbers which can be extrapolate from the PS5 outselling PS3 we get at least 1.15 million Portals in the US. I think the Portal worldwide might be much closer to the Steam Deck than we realize.

@CallMeDuraSouka yes the Portal had a range of issues, not least the notorious refresh/stutter problems. Don't get me wrong, it's good, but there are some tech deficiencies and Sony are far from the best streaming service out there, although they have impressively overtaken Xbox.

Yes, I prefer streaming from GFN than playing locally on my PC.

Same experience using Ultimate (4K, 120fps, HDR) but with zero fan noise, no excess heat during the UK summer heatwave, and brand new games aren't installing their vile root kit DRM's with all the associated problems on my machine!

Plus my own PC and GFN were using RTX4080, whereas a month back I got a £1000 RTX 5080 upgrade at the amazing price of £0, versus buying the card myself.

@rockodoodle Indeed. I did buy an extra long Ethernet cable and I can hardwire it when I really want to, but it does nothing for the aesthetic of my home. 😂. And it’s a trip hazard. But yes, the performance is pretty flawless when streaming from the PS5 when it’s hard-wired.

Fair, it's the best Sony has done with remote play to make it accessible. To market it 'better' then PSP to Vita attempts. Or hey PS4/Smartphones and PC can too but people prefer the Portal for feature reasons.

But lack of dual screen support, app support, no idea if resolution scaling of 480p to 1080p like the PS5 has, or is it just auto. Even Vita had 360p and 540p scaling. It was simple but something that should have been there.

Dumbed down that it disappoints me, but I hope this doesn't mean we get a repeat and they go 'oh we have a new Portal 2' and it's just as basic and dumbed down as the 1st one and doesn't follow up any features Vita, Smartphone controller apps or PSVR had of dual screen uses at all.

let alone what Wii U, SmartGlass and Vita didn't do. 2 different apps/games per screen. Won't happen but I'd like them to do it. Music app/web browser/digital manual from web browser or so and playing the game.

Moving the HUD down to the Portal.

But nope. We will get another generic Portal with the same boring features. Like Switch 2, wow it has enhancements, and they are boring........ The basic experience for many users sure, but if they want others to get on board add more features.

Give Indies something to do. Not a device where no one develops for it and it just casts but has controller features, wow how boring. Why should i care about the screen in t he middle then.

Indies laughed because of no Vita follow up, but what if Sony allowed them to do dual screen or other features with it. 1st party don't have if they don't want to. But give devs something to work with, not just PS+ Cards or smartphone app (like the PS5 tactics game or Just Dance or whatever). Or any other PS5 features they have when we could have others they could offer.

Let devs seek it out even. Players did Steam Controller gyro besides the click pads, same with Steam Deck they love the trackpads. Sometimes players or devs will seek it out themselves.

I want to use remote play but I mean they aren't giving me a reason to because they don't have any compelling features but the basics, I don't want the basics.

Thanks engineers and marketing team for a boring product. Add more features please.

it's a trash device, limited by the technology running it, and people will completely forget about it once sony's new deck gets released. they will see just how poor the performance was compared to a native handheld.

@Slippship isn't a steamdeck technically even better for streaming? Customizable controls, oled screen and you don't have to buy another device?

@Slippship Lol. What? Steam deck is definitely the better performing device. Plus most PS5 games you can play on steam deck. @Fillem You technically don't need another device for the portal but you have to pay for the highest tier of ps+ for that feature

@babybilly never really enjoyed streaming with latency of everything. With 900mb broadband. I know I can buy most, again, but why would you.

@Fillem not with my skills... 😂😂😂😂😂

Well, it certainly is a bigger success than the VR fad. So, i am not surprised they are changing gears.
It's just sad that the Vita was sacrificed at the altar of VR.

The general consensus seems to be that the people who bought one are very happy with it. Which is good.

But the Portal really reminds me how far removed I am from the priorities and wishes of today's gamers. I hardly ever use my Switch handheld, and when the Portal was announced, I would have bet good money that a streaming-only handheld that was more similar to the WiiU gamepad than a new PSVita would completely and utterly bomb.

I still feel like it may be the single most overpriced and useless bit of gaming peripheral of the entire generation, but I can only speak for myself. If everyone else loves it, I´m happy for them.

@whmchrish think of it this way: if someone wants to play a playstation game and they don't have access to a TV because their kids or their partner is using it, what are their options?

I think its ridiculous they are already moving away from the portal and thinking of a new device when they haven't even got this one working properly yet. Im so disappointed with my portal, it can't stream from the ps5 very well at all, streaming from the playstation plus catalogue seems fine but its a very limited selection of games. As a user I expect it to just work, i shouldn't have to go to Google and read for hours to try and find settings to change and try, they need to get it right.

If they are going to abandon the portal and move on, then they should give portal users heavy discounts on the new model.

Mines a very expensive paper weight.

Portal is great. Having PS5 level graphics in your hands is so spectacular. But it’s time for a native handheld. I would buy it in a heartbeat

It’s an amazing device, works flawlessly and feels great to use. I’ve got two, white and 30th anniversary.

I ended up returning mine due to better overall experience on a 4K TV, the lack of back buttons being hard to go back to after getting used to DualSense Edge, and the high input latency (especially for games that benefit from quick reactions). That latency comes from Remote Play itself (which Portal relies on) and is due to video encoding latency on the PS5. So, the input latency is still high even if you remove all network latency by connecting the Remote Play client device directly to the PS5 via Ethernet cable without the router in between (not possible with Portal, as that's WiFi-only).