Sony has started working on a portable console capable of playing games on PlayStation 5, Bloomberg Report.
Citing anonymous sources familiar with the development of the device, Bloomberg stated that it will likely be many years before the novel handheld is released, and Sony may still decide to withdraw from the project.
Sony is said to be considering the move to compete with Nintendo’s dominance in handheld consoles and ward off competition from Xbox, which has indicated it is exploring the handheld concept. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer recently said that a potential Xbox portable console will also be coming in a few years.
Over the past few years, Valve has opened up a novel market for more costly, more powerful, premium portable gaming devices with Steam Deck, which now has a number of competitors that also support PC gaming. This appears to have encouraged Microsoft and Sony to reconsider the handheld market, long thought to be blocked by Nintendo after Sony tried to challenge it with the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita, which ultimately failed.
Meanwhile, Nintendo is set to replace the nearly eight-year-old Switch – the third best-selling console of all time – with a successor in the first half of 2025. The “Switch 2” is believed to be weaker than the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but they can deliver a similar experience thanks to AI-based upscaling technology.
Sony has developed its own artificial intelligence scaling module, called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is used in the novel PlayStation 5 Pro console. This technology would likely play an instrumental role in developing a portable device that can play PS5 games.
For now, Sony offers PlayStation Portal, a portable device that allows PS5 games to be streamed directly from the owner’s PS5 console or via Sony’s cloud gaming service, offered as part of a PlayStation Plus subscription.
