Even better then... I also alluded to them just letting every PS device stream games too.
Good thing it'll not be a Windows handheld, then.
PC is kinda a different market. It has lots of devices such as laptops, that can also be used for work.
Gonna flop hard for sure, if they go ahead. Think of gta 6. Buy it on disk for ps5, stream it to your portal, at higher quality than the portable Playstation is going to be able to do. As long as you have network connectivity.
You try and sell a big boy handheld locked to Sony's OS and Sony's store, it's gonna fail. Hard. No one's but the fan boys are paying a Sony Premium to get less out of their hardware while paying more for their software.
And what are the non-fanboys going to buy? An Asus Rog Ally?
It can succeed if it's steam like where devs don't have to do extra work. The hardware needs to be profitable from day 1 like the Portal. I can see it selling more than the Vita.
The handhelds that they're already buying that Sony will be trying to ape.
I don't think that is Sony's plan with this. It sounds like it is basically a low power version on their next console in handheld form. It's going to use the current PS library so I am not sure they are trying to take on the PC handheld market like MS is.
In my eyes, it goes one of two ways:
You know how consoles work. This has always been the case. You can buy a PC for freedom or a console for the benefits it offers. Having a dedicated store and hardware means every game works without tweaks. I love tweaking things, so the Steam Deck/PC is fun for me to mess around with. However, there is something to be said for simplification and just knowing that a game is running as optimized as I can get it on a console.
Except, the handheld is half the power of the PS5. I don't see how that's zero risk for developers, when they didn't even want to support the Xbox Series S.
You didn't answer my question: why buy a limited PlayStation handheld with higher software prices and paid online when I can buy an unlimited PC handheld with free online and better software prices and play many of PlayStations games already for marginally more buy in? I suspect Microsoft couldn't answer this question which is one of the reasons they shelved their own project. Most of the titles we're talking about will have their own handheld profiles already, and there's only so much you can do better hardware wise.
How many next gen comparable PC handhelds have people bought in the future?
I've already commented on this: I believe making it a console makes it less attractive in this form factor, not better.
Its a big world out there. Whether it fails is both a question of what Sony's expectations are and how it performs in various territories.
You are very much right that the memory capacity is the most problematic part of the Series S. But porting games from PS5 to Portable is trivial only assuming the CPU performance is in the same ballpark. And we don't know that yet.
It's probably targeting Japan market, which is dominated by the Switch
How many they've already bought.
I've already read it, there's nothing on the conversation that couldn't be applied to the console vs. PC sphere, and it's not like we've seen any huge paradigm shift; they're the exact same arguments people use to argue over PC being a better value proposition than consoles, and yet PS5 sales are up YoY.
Switch has the sales benefit of not needing to be used as a portable. No point chasing that unless you go all in like Nintendo has.
Even the Nintendo Switch Lite, a late model refresh that had no virtue of being pushed as a main console, sold 25M units. The OLED model, that had a larger, OLED screen as its selling point? 30M units.
The Vita was meant to follow on the success of all other PlayStation platforms that had come out up to that point -- that is +80M PS3s and PSPs sold, a 100M PS1s and +155M PS2s. Of course it was a failure.
How could anyone have bought next-gen comparable PC handhelds that don't exist yet?
You're not really thinking this through. For the "console vs PC", there's an enormous amount of benefit to be gained from moving to a console over a PC in terms of end user benefit - ranging from a lower cost buy-in all the way up to better hardware utilisation through a static hardware target. However, that's because PCs are massive machines designed to do basically everything, while consoles are stripped down versions of them designed to do basically one thing. There's a lot of room for efficiency and cost gains along the way. Handhelds are stripped even down further. However, there's only so much you can rip out, which is why Nintendo's brand new flagship console performs about as well as a three and a half year old Steam Deck for basically the same price. And they poured a lot more into the Switch 2 than Valve did into the Steam Deck. And therein lies the problem: at this level, there's not a whole lot more you can do differently to make your handheld better. While consoles can differentiate themselves from the PC in lots of ways, the handheld space has a lot less room to do so when we're talking about the cutting edge. So, no, it's not the same thing.
So, the answer to "why should I buy a PSP3 over a Steam Deck 2?" is "because of the PlayStation logo"? Subtle.
Right now I'm already seeing people chose a Steam Deck over a Switch 2 - and Nintendo's first party titles are a heck of a lot better than PlayStation's. As PlayStation continues its multiplatform trajectory, there will be less reasons to get a PSP3. The sheer flexibility PC handhelds offer, in combination with console-like OS interfaces like Steam Deck and Window's new modes, means it's already about as easy as it can be on a PC handheld. And on a PC handhelds, you can literally do anything - including booting it into a Desktop if you really want to. And again, your answer to "why should I buy a PSP3 over a Steam Deck 2?" is "because of the PlayStation logo".
You do realise the reason Sony's looking at handhelds again is because Valve demonstrated you can fit a PS4 into a handheld and make it affordable. The Steam Deck doesn't have a single exclusive, was a brand new form factor, and came from a company not really associated with hardware. And still the Steam Deck popularised the form-factor so much that it created a legion of imitators and forced Microsoft to revisit Window's gaming performance, including creating an entirely new handheld mode for the OS to use. Nintendo sells their hardware on the strength of their first party titles, so they'll always have an install base. But you'd be silly to think that the Steam Deck hasn't started something in that space. But hey - keeping buying anything with a PlayStation logo. It never fails.
Checking 9700X vs 3700X 720p gaming at Techpowerup... The 9700X is less than 60% faster.
I still think they should have launched on some sort of a 2nm platform. That would run downscaled PS5 games very nicely.
Exclusives? PS6 won't have exclusives and you expect the handheld to have some?
They would be happy to sell 15M handhelds and +100M PS6 I think. They could see the handheld market as the future. It's the main console market in Japan and it could become that way elsewhere too. Even me I consider buying that handheld instead of a more expensive PS6. If the handheld can play PS6 crossgen games for 5/6 years, that'll be perfect. And it's not like we think Sony are going to make exclusives for PS6, that era is gone.
Holy hyperbole batman!
For the people already owning a PS5 or a PS6 with portal which is a niche accessory.
There is no way it won't have Cross Buy, that would be the biggest Sony fail if it doesn't share licensing.
I understand your point, which is a fair point.
People are wondering if GTA6 would only run at 30fps on the console and you think it will run on a 4 low power cpu cores, which may in fact be 3 cores because of the OS?
The handheld market is not dead. It's dominated by Nintendo. That's not the same thing.
I think that just shows you how desperate these companies are to grow a new market. They're actually trying things that aren't a sure thing.
Which they're pretty bad at.
Switch is largely sold as a hybrid and not a handheld. I wouldn't count it as being part of the handheld market.
We don't know about OS CPU allocations but they gave about 80% of CPU power and 8 threads on the low power mode on PS5. It'll definitely run on the handheld with some patching (from 13 threads to 8 threads) and that version could well be patched with ML upscaling.
Trying new things can hardly be a bad thing?
