Digital Foundry Corroborating Reports About A PlayStation Handheld Console Incoming
PlayStation will celebrate its 30th Anniversary tomorrow at time of writing, and while players much younger than 30 might only know PlayStation for its home consoles, long-time fans know it used to have quite the foothold in the handheld market.
The PlayStation Portable was a revolution, and the first handheld console to actually give Nintendo some competition. The PlayStation Vita after it was ahead of its time, and if not for Sony essentially giving up on the platform after they made a couple of bone-head decisions, PlayStation might’ve never left handhelds behind.
But lately there have been rumours and most recently reports from bigger outlets that are saying Sony is getting back into the mobile space with a new handheld console in development.
Bloomberg’s report last month should give players a reason to raise an eyebrow, and now Digital Foundry has corroborated some of what we heard from Bloomberg. Consider that both eyebrows raised.
“What’s interesting about this is we actually heard about this handheld some months ago from a couple of sources specifically. So we’re not in the business of leaking things, but it’s interesting that this finally sort of started to make its rounds because it just sort of confirmed what we had seen and heard off the record about this existing, which is cool,” said John Linneman during Digital Foundry’s weekly DF Direct show.
“To me, this sort of just strengthens the notion that year, they’re very much working on something,” he continues.
“And this article makes it seem like it’s even further out than I actually thought based on that, so I’m not sure where it’s going, I think there’s like prototype stuff out there possible. There’s still a lot of questions for this, but it does feel like this future of offering a handheld and a home console option is very likely at this point.”
Digital Foundry does offer a more tempered idea of the handheld though – for example they don’t say that it’ll be playing PS5 games in all their glory.
“There’s no way a device that chews through 200 watts right now [the PS5] is going to suddenly do the same results at 20 watts a couple of years down the road. It’s just not happening,” said Richard Leadbetter.
“So you know, what we’re sort of seeing in that story about the ability to run PlayStation 5 games, it’s not going to happen.” Leadbetter continues to say that, like Linneman, he believes the handheld will be an exercise in “scalability.”
Which of course is just Leadbetter pointing out that sure, you might be able to play a game also available on PS5 on this incoming handheld device, but don’t expect it to actually look and play like a portable PS5.
Tempered or not, the idea and potential of a new PlayStation handheld that operates similarly to a Steam Deck or ROG Ally but for your PlayStation library of games, with trophies and everything might be a huge pull for fans that have wanted a new handheld device from PlayStation for years.
If nothing else, the success of the PlayStation Portal has shown that people want a handheld experience for their PlayStation games. A proper handheld solution that doesn’t rely on a Wi-Fi connection could sell like hotcakes.
Source – [Digital Foundry]
