I started 2024 debating between buying a Playstation Portal or a Steam Deck. I decided on the Portal since my gaming is deeply rooted in the Playstation ecosystem, and am happy with the decision understanding that the Portal is a bit of a niche device. I say that it is a niche device because of its inability to play games natively on the device. Its reliance on a solid network connection and a PS5 console is a major limitation in terms of portability. The device was designed to be played at home, and since I was already heavily involved with Playstation and Playstation Plus, the aforementioned limitations didn't bother me much. All of this has been well documented in the first 8 parts of this series, so I don't want to dwell on it too much more here. What I do want to discuss, however, is how my 2024 ended in terms of portable gaming and what I foresee happening in the future with mobile gaming.
A few weeks ago Sony came out with an update for the Portal allowing it to stream games. This was a feature that I wanted from the beginning and I think is big news for the future of gaming. The idea of streaming games has been around for a decade or more, but not until the recent past has it become reliable enough to push to the masses. Certain games on Playstation Plus can be streamed from the PS5, and I've done this a few times and it seems to work well. Since the Portal updated I've had the opportunity to stream a few games on it and it worked well also. The benefit for me is that it allows for the opportunity to quickly play games without waiting for the download and without taking up precious hard drive space on your console.
If you take this concept a bit further, however, major ideas start to emerge. The biggest idea is the question of the relevance of the console. When you stream games on the Portal, it completely bypasses my PS5 and connects directly to Sony's servers. I haven't had a chance to test this theory, but I suspect that streaming the games on the Portal will perform better than playing them from the PS5, simply because their network is likely more robust. More to come on that theory, but bypassing the PS5 also opens the opportunity to play games on your computer, tablet, or smart TV. Imagine downloading a Playstation app on your smart TV and connecting your Dual Sense controller to play. To some extent this is already possible, but again, it requires owning a PS5 and this completely bypasses that requirement.
Currently, the streaming library for the Portal is a bit limited. It doesn't even include all of the games that you can stream from Playstation Plus. I suspect (or hope) this will change in the future. The streaming technology seems stable enough to use currently, but does need to be tweaked and improved so that it includes all of the features that games have when you play them from your console. This should happen as the technology advances. As it stands currently, if I have the option to play a game from my PS5 vs stream the game, I still prefer to play it locally on my PS5. I think that still allows for the best experience. I find the most value in streaming on games that I really want to just trial or to quickly play a game that I'm not too serious about. However, I think this update for the Portal shows that Sony is serious about streaming games. I expect the technology to continue to advance and am interested to see how the Portal, streaming, and portable gaming advances in 2025. There are rumors that Sony is looking into developing a dedicated portable system (a la the PS Vita) and we still have not heard official news about the Switch successor but I expect news soon and I expect that it will be portable as well. It should be fun times in 2025 for portable gaming.
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