You Get A Handheld, You Get A Handheld, You All Get A Handheld Sony Apparently Working On Playstation Handheld
The video game market is starting to feel like an episode of Oprah, with the Nintendo Switch out there, the PlayStation Portal (pictured above) now going cloud-based, the Steam Deck, Xbox reportedly in development of a handheld, and now Sony is also developing a handheld (that’s apparently, somehow, different from the Portal?) Because, why not?
Word of this comes from Bloomberg, whose anonymous sources familiar with this supposed device stated that, like the Xbox handheld, it is years away from release. The source also mentioned that Sony could cancel it at any time.
Supposedly, the decision to pursue this (again, something that’s not the Portal...) is partly due to Nintendo’s dominance in console sales and to try and head off Xbox’s attempt to tap into the handheld market as well.
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As mentioned above, the introduction of the Steam Deck a few years back, alongside the success of the Nintendo Switch (and the supposed launch of the Switch 2, name still forthcoming, in 2025), ushered in a new generation of handhelds. The success of the Steam Deck also inspired other, more affordable PC handhelds to hit the market as well. With society increasingly mobile and technology increasing at a rapid enough pace, even our phones can now support and play whole games. This presents a welcome opportunity to the profit-hungry corporations that supply our gaming habit to tap into.T
he report also mentions the Switch-2-but-not-officially-Switch-2-despite-the-rumor-that-it’s-releasing-in-March’s use of AI upscaling to help it graphically compete with current generation non-mobile consoles and that any PlayStation handheld in the future is likely to use Sony’s PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) like the Switch’s successor.
It’s hard to say what the likelihood of this happening is, given that the Portal is relatively successful, and Sony just recently announced that the Portal can now connect to the cloud and play games that way, no longer anchoring players to their residences and relying on a connection to their PS5. Either way, the future seems mobile.
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Source(s): Polygon