Sony may be working on a new PlayStation portable

Whispers and vague tweets about this have been making the rounds on the Web for some months now – truth be told, it’s a possibility that makes a lot of sense even if nobody had heard anything about it – but it’s when legacy media get involved that a piece of information finally gets the attention it deserves. Takashi Mochizuki and Debby Wu of Bloomberg report (paywalled content) that Sony “is in the early stages of developing a portable console that would play PS5 games on the move”. This product, per the report, “is aimed at expanding Sony’s reach and contending with Nintendo in the portable gaming space” but “it is likely years away from launch and the company could still decide against bringing it to market”.

The way the article is written makes it clear that we’re not talking about a streaming-based device here – that is, a handheld system that can only play games stored on a remote PS5 or on cloud servers, like the PlayStation Portal currently does – but a full-on gaming console like the Switch or the SteamDeck that can work without an Internet connection if need be. Bloomberg’s report does mention that Microsoft is officially working on a handheld gaming console too – Phil Spencer has also stated that such a product “is some years away” – while also namedropping the PlayStation Portable and the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s past handheld systems that did not find great commercial success but did not fail to build a loyal, vocal fanbase either.

The problem is that a somewhat light, affordable and portable device capable of playing standard PS5 games is literally impossible to build – not just right now, but in the foreseeable future too.

It’s true that Bloomberg’s sources have proved to be trustworthy in the past and that such an outlet would not risk reporting on unsubstantiated rumors, but the vagueness and wariness of the information on offer invites skepticism. Companies like Sony are constantly working on prototypes of stuff that may or may not come to market, so reporting that “it’s thinking about building a new handheld gaming system” is not actually news unless there is a tentative timeframe of release, a set of target tech specs and a development roadmap.

Most importantly, though, the report does not take into account the fact that a portable device capable of playing PlayStation5 games is literally impossible to build – not just right now, which is a given, but in the foreseeable future too. The gap between a PS5 and any handheld gaming system is simply vast in terms of processing capabilities and power consumption. It’s so vast, in fact, that it’s unlikely to be closed by any next-generation manufacturing process any time soon: AMD would have to design a CPU/GPU combination based on a 2nd or 3rd-gen 2nm process, capable of working within a 50-Watt power envelope at most, in order for Sony to put together a handheld system that’s able to play PlayStation5 games on the go. Let alone do that for more than 3-4 hours.

We’ll obviously get there – at some point – but then we’d be talking about a 2027 or 2028 timeframe… and what the handheld gaming market is going to look like then is anyone’s guess. Sony has been understandably hesitant to offer a new portable PlayStation after the failure of the PS Vita, so chances are that it will be extremely careful to do that with a product that’s going to be both expensive and entering a mature market (like the handheld gaming one is going to be in four years). It definitely makes sense for the company to offer a handheld system that directly competes with the Switch 2 and a portable Xbox system from a business strategy perspective, but going for full PS5 games on the go seems like an unrealistic goal at the moment.

Still, the way most games are designed nowadays (with scalability in mind) and key new technologies (such as AI upscaling) could actually help bring such a product to market sooner than it would otherwise be possible to. There’s currently some speculation online, for instance, about the possibility of Sony using a bespoke, more down-to-earth AMD system-on-a-chip than the ones scheduled to appear after 2026, capable of running downgraded PS5 games: that is, the same titles but displayed at lower levels of graphics fidelity and resolution, which would be far more suitable for playing on smaller screens and on the move while also being less demanding in terms of processing and power consumption.

Sony could be planning to use a less powerful AMD chip capable of running PS5 games in a “downgraded”, less hardware-demanding form, much more suitable for smaller screens.

In any case, it will be interesting to see if and how Sony decides to explore the option of a new portable PlayStation system in due course, especially after the rather unexpected success of the PlayStation Portal. People seem to like the idea of a portable way to enjoy their PS5 games and many hardcore PlayStation fans have fond memories of the PSP and the PS Vita despite their respective flaws. The PlayStation brand is as strong as ever and Sony’s current dominance in the home gaming console space could provide the kind of leverage a handheld system could make use of as a competitive advantage in the long run. It’s all about the games, after all, no?