Another year, another update to Sony’s PlayStation Portal. The latest tweak to the hardware considerably expands the roster of games playable on the device—but the end result only highlights how urgently PlayStation needs to re-enter the gaming handheld market for real.

The evolution of PlayStation Portal has been fascinating to watch, mainly to see Sony practically scrambling to keep up with the gadget’s unexpected popularity. Launched November 2023, Portal was intended as a mere accessory for PlayStation 5. It had no native processing abilities, simply using Sony’s Remote Play technology to stream whatever happened on players’ personal PS5 to the portable’s screen.

Although it could technically be used anywhere with a strong Wi-Fi signal, difficulties connecting to public networks and high speed requirements to even launch a stream meant the Portal was effectively only suitable for in-home use, to free up the main TV or play in another room.

Somehow, it still took off, with Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino saying in 2024 that the Portal had been a “huge success.” The same year, Sony made it easier to connect to public Wi-Fi and added actual cloud gaming support to Portal, with a selection of games on offer to players subscribing to PlayStation Plus Premium. The initial offering included “over 120 PS5 games from the PS Plus Game Catalog,” though the curated library was subject to change. It could have been a big shift in how players approached hardware and software alike, but, in practice, didn’t really deliver.

Even so, another year on and the Portal’s success seems unstoppable. Sony’s Takuro Fushimi recently told TechRadar that “the community’s response has been overwhelming” and that Portal is now the “most widely used device for PS5 Remote Play.” It’s little surprise, then, that Sony keeps trying to hammer it into something that looks, if you squint, like the standalone gaming handheld it was never intended to be, but that players so desperately want.

Clearer Skies?

Enter the newest update to PlayStation Portal. It takes Cloud Streaming out of its beta phase, expanding the streamable library from only those titles included in the PS Plus selection to many games digitally owned by players. Until now, if you didn’t have a game installed locally on your PS5 or it wasn’t included in that cloud catalog, too bad, no Portal play for you. Going forwards, you’ll be able to cloud stream many titles if they’re tied to your PlayStation account through purchase on the PlayStation Store—although you will still need to be subscribed at the PS Plus Premium tier to use the feature, which will set you back $160 for a full year.

The assortment available is already vast—more than 3,000 games at time of writing. On the face of it, this should be a transformative development for not just the Portal, but PlayStation as a gaming ecosystem. It potentially extends availability of titles you own to wherever you want to play them, and could even help alleviate data storage woes. Although the PS5’s internal drives can be expanded, SSDs can be pricey at higher capacities, and players with large digital collections often can’t install everything they own. Being able to stream games tied to your account without eating up drive space could be a great workaround.

The update also aims to improve the broader player experience on Portal. It finally adds the ability to make in-game purchases when cloud streaming (potentially useful if you want to buy some DLC or virtual currency), and allows players to receive game invites to multiplayer sessions when playing a game via the cloud. Previously, these features were only enabled for Remote Play gaming on Portal, since they were effectively being done through the PS5 and mirrored on the Portal’s screen. Accessibility features have also been improved, adding a screen reader tool and adjustable text sizes.

Failure to Launch

I was cautiously excited at the overhaul’s potential, thinking it might help me tackle my ever-growing backlog of unfinished games. Lately, I’ve recently been trying to make my way through Koei Tecmo’s Atelier Ryza trilogy, cozy but absolutely massive Japanese RPGs. I say “trying” because these are time sinks by any measure—around 80 hours each, with the recently released trilogy pack featuring the “DX” versions that add even more content, and there are only so many hours in the day that I can spend rotting in front of my PS5.

However, given all three are included in the new cloud streaming roster, being able to play them in shorter chunks on the go might be a great way to get through these gargantuan adventures. Plus, with Cloud Streaming out of beta, surely it’s overcome its previous shoddy performance, right?

Unfortunately, wrong. For all the features Sony has added to Portal and the overall catalog it has access to, it is still fatally stymied by being a streaming-only piece of hardware. Sony officially states that “PlayStation Portal Remote Player requires broadband internet Wi-Fi with at least 5 Mbps for use. For a better play experience, a high-speed connection of at least 15 Mbps is recommended.” In reality, those numbers are woefully optimistic. Trying to connect to Sony’s servers and stream a game on anything but a lightning-fast connection remains an exercise in frustration, and makes out-of-home play nigh-impossible.

Testing the Portal in a coffee shop, getting a network speed test result of 14.97 Mbps—just shy of that “better experience” number but 3x the supposed minimum requirement—an attempt to launch the first Atelier Ryza was met with an error message of “can’t start the streaming game because of poor connection quality.” I tried to tether to my phone instead, getting a speed of 17.29 Mbps and with the Portal as the only connected device. I got the same failure to launch, but with a different error message: “Can’t start the streaming game, try again.”

Thinking that perhaps my signal was slightly blocked by sitting towards the rear of the building, I moved to a table closer to the street, and reset the connection. Another speed test told me I might have been onto something, as I was now getting 37.14 Mbps—surely more than doubling the speed will help me play a game? Nope: “Can’t start because your internet connection quality might not be sufficient to play streaming games.” Points for the variety of ways to say nothing works, I guess.

There are numerous reasons why connection speeds in any given network environment can fluctuate, but I was surprised that the experience now proved worse than the last time I tested the Portal in a coffee shop, where an even slower 11 Mbps connection sufficed to at least launch Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Gris, albeit not in great quality. This go around, I could log in and browse both the PS Plus catalog and my own library of digitally owned games, but absolutely nothing would play.

It’s particularly annoying given that Sony’s pitch for the new Cloud Streaming offering is that it “makes it easier to enjoy PS5 games on the go—at a hotel, café, friend’s place, or anywhere else with a high-speed internet Wi-Fi connection.” In fact, at a friend’s house was the only place I could get it working, thanks to an 802 Mbps connection speed—but it shouldn’t take nearly 54x the recommended 15 Mbps for the Portal to perform its sole function.

Back Down to Earth

So, if multiple attempts to morph the Portal into being a vaguely portable console have, charitably, underdelivered, there’s only one path left for Sony: fully commit to a true, dedicated gaming handheld again.

It’s easy to understand why Sony might be cautious on this, since its last effort—the brilliant but under-appreciated PlayStation Vita—failed to match the success of its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable (an estimated 14 to 16 million units sold, versus the PSP’s 82.5 million). However, the market is vastly different now, and so are player expectations. The Nintendo Switch changed everything: rather than handhelds being bespoke systems with their own games, often cut-down versions of the titles enjoyed at home, there was now a system that offered the exact same experience wherever you went.

Players loved this, and seemingly everyone was copying the Switch’s approach. By the time Portal launched in 2023, the Steam Deck was already riding high and had inspired a slate of rivals, all of which allowed PC gamers to take their libraries with them wherever they went. When the Switch 2 launched earlier in 2025, it went on to become the fastest-selling console ever. Even Xbox is trying to get in on the action, with its ROG Xbox Ally handhelds in partnership with Asus, and its “Play Anywhere” initiative.

The good news is Sony may be working on something of a course correction. Rumors have abounded since at least 2024 that a true successor to the Vita is in development, one that can supposedly natively play PS5 games. Others suggest that Sony will take a page from Nintendo’s book and offer a hybrid device, with a handheld that slots into a power-boosting dock for at-home play, possibly as a companion device to the inevitable PlayStation 6. There’s potentially very good incentive for that last approach, since a combo of the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Deck could steal everyone’s lunch.

While there are no official announcements from Sony on its future hardware plans—bar some very technical nuggets shared by PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny back in October 2025—there have been some purported leaks claiming that Sony is pushing developers to adopt the PS5’s new “Power Saver” setting, which reduces performance of demanding games to cut their energy usage. Beyond environmental benefits, slashing power drain for big games would also help optimize battery life, a necessity for a handheld processing games locally.

With its latest Cloud Streaming update for Portal, Sony recognizes that people want to play the same games on the go that they do at home, continuing their progress and having a continuity of experience between platforms. The problem is how it goes about delivering that. Relying on cloud gaming as a delivery mechanism is a fool’s errand—the network infrastructure just isn’t there to make it viable, especially in public. I doubt it ever will be, either.

For many players, the dream is unfettered access to the PlayStation games they own, wherever they want to play them, without having to hope the connection-quality gods are on your side. No matter what features are added, PlayStation Portal is incapable of making that dream a reality—and until it has a handheld that can, Sony’s portable play plans are in the clouds.