Comment by dinckel@lemmy.world on PlayStation Portal review: impressive hardware but is Remote Play itself good enough?

I genuinely just don’t understand the value proposition of this handheld. It’s remote play only, with no standalone capabilities, that also only works with the PS5. You could use your existing phone, and receive exactly the same product. Or if you’re committed to buying a handheld, you could absolutely get a Steam Deck, still receive the remote functionality, but also have a system that can not only play your PC games, but play like 5 generations of console games from the past

It’s good for a niche market, people who have multiple people living in the house where they have to share a TV, but don’t need to share the PlayStation. In that one niche it makes sense to me

In every other way though, why not a handheld?

I think that niche might be bigger and more normal than you think it is.

Why a handheld if 99% of people don’t want to use it outside of the house and just want a home-portsble

Edit to just point out how disappointed I am in this community lately. It’s become all the things that made me dislike reddit. The circlejerk here is just as strong, and all the discussions we had initially are gone in favor of updooting my opinion and downdooting everyone else.

Yeah it was odd to read that description being presented as an oddity - that sounds like most households I know. If you have a wife, kids, or roommate and don’t enjoy being holed up in your own room the whole time you play (and those sharing your house don’t just want to watch you game all night) then in house streaming is a huge boon.

I PC game, but most of my gaming is done on the couch, streamed onto my phone. I’ve been very tempted to buy a dedicated streaming device lately to avoid draining my phone battery while playing

It’s an oddity because there’s already multiple devices in most homes that can remote play, paying for a device that can ONLY remote play is about the stupidest waste of money I can think of when I have two phones, a PC, a laptop and a tablet that can all do the same thing. Hell if you plug in an ethernet cable the PC and laptop well do it better.

It could have been a cool device if you could use it to stream from PS+/Now, but you can’t. It could be cool if it had like a vita in it or something so you could play vita games, but it didn’t. It’s an idea with potential, but they shoved all that potential in a bin and instead released something that’s completely useless unless it’s connected to your PS5. What a waste.

It’s completely useless, unless you want to play your ps5 in the same kind of way you play a nintendo switch. In which case it works super well.

it turns out a lot of people want that. People could stick a laptop on their lap and get out a controller and play nintendo switch on that too, but that’s a pain. people just want a thing they can pick up. and they are happy to have it. even if you are angry about it.

There’s multiple devices that allow you to play your PS5 like a Switch, and they all do more.

I’m not angry, you can have opinions about things you’re not angry about. I’m disappointed that Sony charged as much as possible for the bare minimum again, just a lack of ambition and abundance of cost.

Agreed, people on here can’t seem to understand how this product could be successful? Every post about it on here has the same upvoted comments about how people should get a Steam Deck instead. If someone comments about why they like it or are happy with it, it gets downvoted.

Personally I probably won’t ever buy one of these but to act like your opinion about something as unimportant as a this is better than everyone else’s screams of reddit to me. Why not just let people be happy with their purchase?

Edit to just point out how disappointed I am in this community lately. It’s become all the things that made me dislike reddit. The circlejerk here is just as strong, and all the discussions we had initially are gone in favor of updooting my opinion and downdooting everyone else.

This has been Lemmy wide and growing substantially. I’m put off and disappointed as well.

Both of you had too lofty dreams for social media. Reddit itself used to be like that too, by convincing themselves that this sort of idealistic attitude could last, or that “circlejerk”, that is, the influence of majority opinion, was ever not present. This is a place for discussion among regular people, not a philosophical symposium of specialists, as if those environments were truly neutral and universally accepting either.

As platforms grow beyond the most invested niche users, most people will not put more energy into any discussion than a general agree or disagree. The tendency of downvotes is always to become a disagree button, no matter how much one might insist otherwise. In such a semi-anonymous platform, a modicum of politeness is already an achievement.

Really, if you do want to have such a perfectly open and supportive discussion group you might want to select particular people to create a small forum. But by doing that, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you won’t escape some form of circlejerk.

Dunno why you stretched that point across so many words. I’m not speaking on just downvotes. There’s trigger words that will almost universally get you comment bombed along with being downvoted. We filtered everyone of the same mind from Reddit and brought them here. To the point that Reddit could theoretically be better now.

This platform has shrunk, not grown. The good people seem to have left, maybe as a result of the reddit people coming in?

Here’s the thing, this platform is small. It is a small forum, and it’s changed in tone from being a place of discussion, to a place of jerking

The good people seem to have left, maybe as a result of the reddit people coming in?

Or maybe as a result of poor moderation. The way how other instances defederated from lemmy.world comes to mind. Compared to the other instances I am in, this one seems more belligerent, and that’s not a matter of up or downvotes.

I have to admit I did come from reddit, but if there was a moment of pure, 100% jerk free discussion here, I must have entirely missed it. Then again I was on reddit before people started saying circlejerk took over, and in retrospect that was an entirely idealized memory. If anything, it overrepresented certain viewpoints far more before the “circlejerk took over”

Most of my games are on PlayStation. The Steam Deck is clearly the more powerful and capable device, but it is also more expensive and I have no need for any of the extra features. I love the ergonomics of the PS Portal (even though it looks silly), the haptics, the huge screen, and it all comes with a seamless integration into the PlayStation ecosystem. Plus there is no need to take the case off of my phone every time I want to play it unlike the Backbone.

It’s definitely not for everyone but they call it a DadStation for a reason ☺️.

Someone is trying to justify their purchase… check back in a year

You are right. Even though I’ve had an absolute blast using the PS Portal daily ever since i got it I have made the difficult decision to return it because the internet told me that it’s actually not good.

Prehaps an ayn loki zero might be up your valley as its a full fledged budget steamdeck type pc for the same price as a ps portal this might be perfect for you as you could have playstations desktop streaming app installed and some desktop games that’ll run on the meager loki zeros hardware I hear it does a good job emulating games upto ps2 games

https://www.ayntec.com/products/loki-zero-preorder

Or of course a full fledged steamdeck

steam deck is single-handedly the best gaming purchase i think i’ve ever made

You could use your existing phone, and receive exactly the same product.

Your phone has an 8” screen and an integrated Dual Sense?

Or if you’re committed to buying a handheld, you could absolutely get a Steam Deck, still receive the remote functionality

Your Steam Deck has adaptive triggers and HD haptics? Mine doesn’t.

I’m considering getting this even though I already have a Steam Deck.

Funny how they pretend to ask a question, then downvote you when you give them an answer they don’t like.

It’s also half the price of the SD with a bigger resolution screen (bUt mUh oLEd). I pick it up, press like 2 buttons, and I’m playing in 20 sec. I was happy to pay for the convenience, have been using it a lot since I got it the day after the release.

You can plug your dual sense into both a phone and a steam deck without it costing you any more money.

And the dual-sense then attaches to your phone and increases the size of the screen for free?

Get some glue and make a holder or something. Bigger screen? Use a tablet, laptop, or PC that you’ve probably already got. £200 for a device that can’t do anything on its own? Stop bending over for them.

You pay for convenience.

A handheld that can only stream games from a home console is anything but convenient.

Yeah, and convenience used to be putting multiple different functions in one device. Now apparently it’s more convenient to pay £200 for a device that can literally only do one thing instead of using the many other devices you already own to conveniently do the same thing.

They do sell like $5 phone clips for controllers now a days as some mobile games are adding more controller support. But if for you an extra inch or two of screen real estate for the display is worth $200 then that’s your position, it just seems like the market share for that will be pretty damn niche. Like the nvidia shield I don’t expect it to be around for to long so if you do want this you better get one while they make em but know once the ps5 is done support for this will die out as well.

Lol, would love to hear why on earth this is downvoted - guess we’re in full on reddit mode and just downvoting everything that isn’t exactly what I think lol

Honestly when it drops to $150 or so, I’m in. Mostly for these same reasons. I use the PS5 on the good TV, but if I wanna be in the room with my partner while they watch a trash reality show, and keep working on my game, this is perfect. At $200, I’ll stick with remote play on Android and a Bluetooth controller, but the Portal seems better for this use case. So when the price is low enough… Sure.

I’m considering getting this even though I already have a Steam Deck.

I recommend you to do some research, it might not be that good for the only thing this gadget can do.

My phone is nearly a 7in screen, I could Bluetooth connect a Playstation controller and have the exact same functionality, using the hardware I already have. I get that if you don’t have a phone with a bigger screen then this becomes more of a proposition as getting a newer device with a larger screen is gonna be north of $1k USD, so spending $200 to get a portable display and extra controller in a sense is not that bad value wise. I do see where people are seeing it being wasteful as other devices are capable just not at the same level, the only thing I’m wondering is how big is the market of people who wouldn’t rather get a $5 phone holder for their ps5 controller and just use their phone. I see a couple people in this thread here but if most realized they could get a similar experience for $5 for a plastic phone clip would this really look as enticing?

My phone is nearly a 7in screen

Assuming an iPhone Pro Max, with a 6.7” 19,5:9 screen, the 8” 16:9 on the PSPortal has 60% more surface area.

Correct but that screen real-estate isn’t the biggest issue as you generally have the phone and controller fairly close to your eyes, at an optimal viewing distance. Plus, I can stream up to 4k on my device or 1080p at 120fps if I wanted to stream from my pc. Think monitor vs TV gaming. Viewing distance is much more important than screen size on its own.

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