Today, Sony will officially push out one of the biggest PS Portal updates the peculiar little handheld has received since it was first released back in November 2023.
This update, which has been in beta for about a year, will allow anyone that owns the machine to use Cloud Streaming via PlayStation Plus Premium – effectively meaning you can bypass needing a PS5 console at all in order to play the likes of Astro Bot, Borderlands 4, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Fortnite, Ghost of Yōtei, Grand Theft Auto V, Resident Evil 4, and many more (thousands more, in fact, per PlayStation itself).
So, why is this a big deal? Since its launch in 2023, the £200 device (always sold as ‘a PS5 peripheral’ rather than a standalone, game-ready device) sold itself mainly on the fact you could stream from your home console directly to the smaller 1080p screen, with Sony pitching it as a way to share a living room TV or play PS5 games in another room of the house.
It’s always felt a bit limited, or niche, especially for that costly outlay, but Sony’s latest update makes good on its 2024 promise to let you play PS5 games without a central console acting as a hub. It’s a little convoluted to set this up, but it can be done.
If you own a PS Portal, sign into the machine with your PS Plus account (you must have Premium in order to access Game Streaming). Go to the PS Portal settings, and find the option to turn on Game Streaming – currently, still, with the Beta label. Switch it on, and sign back in with your account. At the boot screen, you will be able to access your home PS5 or a separate streaming tab. This will work even if you don’t have a PS5 attached to the PS Portal.
These titles act, to all intents and purposes like ‘real’ installed games: as of today’s update, in-game purchases will be supported, and you can purchase add-on items and in-game currencies without leaving your game session, you will have access to 3D Audio, and you can play in online sessions (though you might want to be mindful of the slight lag).
As shown in the image above, I can play Tekken 3 on the PS Portal without having the game installed on my actual PS5. I could play this – or Astro Bot, or anything from my library or viable game via PlayStation Plus – in the same way. No matter how powerful the title.
Is this going to make me sell my PS5? No, of course not. But I’m going to get far more use out of my Portal, I can tell you that for free: this job has me travelling a fair amount, and sometimes when staying with family or one of my partners, I sometimes have a few hours of downtime. Relying on home and public WiFi connections in order to remote play has always been spotty, but if the Portal can stream effectively from, say, a coffee shop hotspot, the idea of playing Monster Hunter Wilds in a town centre is pretty compelling.
I’ll do a proper test of this from a GP’s office tomorrow morning – when the update for the full-fat version of game streaming is actually live – and report back. But, with this one update, suddenly the appeal (and price!) of a PS Portal starts to make sense.
A full list of compatible games via the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Classics Catalogis available here. The full update goes live on 5th November at 6pm PT / 6th November at 2am GMT.
