When the PlayStation Portal was released last year, it was nothing more than a wireless portable screen for the PS5 console despite its capability to stream games over Wi-Fi – this limitation just made it look downright silly to other ‘true’ gaming handhelds on the market. More than a year on, Sony is finally fixing that.
A Big PlayStation Portal Upgrade
Sony recently announced a new update to the PlayStation Portal that allows users to stream over 120 PS5 games (PS4/PS3 titles not included) from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog, though it is currently on beta testing (meaning you’ll need to have PlayStation Plus Premium subscription to access this, for now).
Games can be streamed with a maximum resolution of 1080p at 60FPS, which requires a minimum 13Mbps connection to work. Alternatively, if you stream at just 720p 30FPS, bandwidth requirement goes down by roughly half to 7Mbps. At minimum, you need 5Mbps connection to start a cloud streaming session, Sony says.
All the controller features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers will work as usual as long as the game itself supports it, and all save data can be synced to the PS5 console so you can pick up the game where you left off from the handheld. However, some features are not available including Game Trials, Party Voice Chat, 3D Audio, and more.
The beta test is only available to select regions, mostly Europe and North America (and Sony’s home country, Japan). Malaysia is not included in this test, and neither is any country in the immediate vicinity of ours – so we likely have to wait until the beta phase is over before Sony considers expanding the availability of this feature.
Pokdepinion: That’s a big upgrade that made the handheld way more useful.
