Sony Knows You Want a True PlayStation Handheld, Even Though it May Take a While

Would you buy Sony’s perfunctory PlayStation Portal if it finally had a screen that looked as good as a Steam Deck OLED? The Portal has proven its chops as a remote player and game streaming device as of late, enough that Sony could be using it as a testbed for what may eventually become a PlayStation 6 handheld. 

Sony’s remote player is literally a DualSense controller split in half with a screen in the middle, which means any upgrade to its display is a pretty big deal. The relatively reliable leaker KeplerL2 posted on the Neogaf forums that there may be an OLED version of the Portal on its way this year. That’s in addition to rumors spread by fellow leaker Zuby_Tech on X, which promised the screen could hit a max of 120Hz refresh rate, up from 60Hz on the current Portal.

This supposed “Portal Pro,†or whatever it’s called, will be the first hardware update to the device since its launch in 2023. We still don’t have a good idea what this would mean for the device’s battery life. All in all, it may prove to be a mere aesthetic upgrade. However, with new updates coming to PlayStation consoles, we may have the chance to see more games hit the fabled 120 fps benchmark when running at that lower resolution.

PlayStation Portal sales aren’t too shabby

The PlayStation Portal offers only an ounce of what players really want from a handheld, and yet it’s reportedly sold relatively well, at least compared to its 2023 launch. Last week, Circana’s leading video game industry analyst, Mat Piscatella, posted on Bluesky that the Portal has a 7% attachment rate for U.S. PS5 owners from launch to date. The PS5 has sold 84.1 million units worldwide as of September last year, according to Sony. 

While we don’t have official numbers on U.S.-specific sales numbers, Circana’s estimates suggest Sony has managed to sell several million units of a device that’s good for remotely playing a PS5 over Wi-Fi and, more recently, for streaming some games with a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. The Portal recently received an update that enhanced its UI and made it easier to access these streaming titles.

The supposed Switch 2-like dockable PlayStation 6 handheld has already been detailed in multiple leaks by reliable AMD rumormonger Moore’s Law is Dead on YouTube. This upcoming device may use AMD’s yet-to-be-released RDNA 5 graphics. That’s a big deal, since it could get access to more graphics potential and better upscaling developed jointly by AMD and Sony. KeplerL2 clarified some additional details to Moore’s Law’s reporting, including that it would use LPDDR5X-9600 memory and run at a standard 15W of TDP (thermal design power). Based on the specs, it could prove to be a powerful handheld for playing current-gen and next-gen titles.

We’ll have to wait for a PS6 handheld

The PlayStation 5 still feels like it has life left in it. Sure, it’s running on AMD’s older RDNA 2 graphics microarchitecture. Some modern games (mostly Unreal Engine 5 titles) struggle to meet the low watermark of 60 fps performance. At the same time, Sony may soon offer a new round of upscaling updates, called PSSR 2 (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), that could boost the performance of games on PlayStation 5 Pro. 

Industry analyst David Gibson at MST Financial reported the ongoing RAM shortage has likely delayed any release of a true PlayStation 6 console. Considering the spiking cost of current-generation consoles, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. The real problem would be a delay for a next-generation Sony handheld, one that may finally prove the company’s PlayStation Vita deserved a second shot. In the meantime, during this cold, cold winter, we may need to huddle for warmth with our PlayStation Portals and imagine what they could be.