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[Ozzie666]

Handhelds worked because of games designed for those systems, just playing already PS5 or PS4 games doesn't work. The econmics don't work, unless they are going to charge a heft price for these 'down grade patches', you need unique games to drive the system. At best you might grow your user base slightly or side ways growth as Valve says with Steamdeck.

Nintendo butchered it's handheld business and colidated, it lowered development costs. It actually shrunk their overall combined user base.

 

[ProtoByte]

A portable directly targets this market.

It does not. You're assuming that the demographics primarily "gaming" on their phones are core gamers that would be interested in playing the types of games that console gamers prefer (not just by engagement numbers for F2P crap, but with actually sales money) in the first place, and that the younger demographic who doesn't have their own money at the moment will want to play core games on a neutered handheld twice the size of their phones.

PS5 which I wouldn't be surprised to still see get releases by the time the PS7 comes out

Sony's in for closure if that happens. People do not buy consoles to play games held back by 10-15 year old hardware.

 

[farmerboy]

Pass.

At this point they're barely supporting the ps5

 

[asdasdasdbb]

People do not buy consoles to play games held back by 10-15 year old hardware.

Yeah. They play games made for 10-15 year old hardware.

 

[Perrott]

If this is a purely portable device with a 7" screen. Then why does it need to be greater than 1080p? The PS5 already works fine connected to a 1080p TV. The system just need to identify itself as a regular PS5 with a 1080p TV to any game, so no "special" patch required.

No, absolutely not.

Even when hooked up to a 1080p TV, the regular PS5 does render the game the same way as if it were to output to 4K, meaning that it is running somewhere in the range of 1080p to 2160p internally either natively or with upscaling, and with graphics presets in line with expectations for a home console with a power budget of over 200w.

This PS5 handheld would definitely need the equivalent to an inverse PS5 Pro patch for PS5 games to run on it - by adjusting the internal output resolution target, reducing the graphical quality all across the board, turning on FSR/PSSR if needed and potentially even halving the performanc targets - within its much smaller power budget.

I can only imagine backwards compatible PS4 titles running natively without any additional developer imput.

People do not buy consoles to play games held back by 10-15 year old hardware.

Say that to the Nintendo Switch, the second best-selling console of all time, and the fastest-selling one time-aligned.

It's always been all about the games.

 

[ProtoByte]

Say that to the Nintendo Switch, the second best-selling console of all time, and the fastest-selling one time-aligned.

It's always been all about the games.

Ugh, ffs. Let me amend since apparently it's not clear enough:
People do not buy 500-700 dollar consoles to play games held back by decade old hardware or on anemic hardware.

You're correct, it's all about the games. Watch Sony or Microsoft release a Switch comparative game and then watch that game flop. The standard of performance here isn't equal.

The Switch, at least, isn't held back by the Wii U or the 3DS. Their fortunes would be much worse if it was. As far as they and their fanbase now accustomed to inferior tech concerned, the Switch is recent hardware, and the most powerful that they've released to date.

Releasing a PS5 Amateur handheld in 2027 would be absolutely ridiculous. Just admit it. If Sony tries to inhabit the space Nintendo does, they will lose their audience and fail to swipe away Nintendo's.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

Releasing a PS5 Amateur handheld in 2027 would be absolutely ridiculous.

But it's fine because all the games are going to be PS5 anyway.

 

[SScorpio]

But it's fine because all the games are going to be PS5 anyway.

And they'll also all be ported to the Switch 2 as well. That releasing with better RT and DLSS which out performs PSSR will make those who bought the $700 Pro feeling silly.

 

[Perrott]

Ugh, ffs. Let me amend since apparently it's not clear enough:
People do not buy 500-700 dollar consoles to play games held back by decade old hardware or on anemic hardware.

You're correct, it's all about the games. Watch Sony or Microsoft release a Switch comparative game and then watch that game flop. The standard of performance here isn't equal.

The Switch, at least, isn't held back by the Wii U or the 3DS. Their fortunes would be much worse if it was. As far as they and their fanbase now accustomed to inferior tech concerned, the Switch is recent hardware, and the most powerful that they've released to date.

Releasing a PS5 Amateur handheld in 2027 would be absolutely ridiculous. Just admit it. If Sony tries to inhabit the space Nintendo does, they will lose their audience and fail to swipe away Nintendo's.

The thing here is that a late-gen PS5 handheld won't really be helding back any PS6 cross-gen games due to how similar modern-day console designs are down to the very core.

This is not a PS4 vs PS5 comparison, in which one of th two consoles actually has an anemic CPU and an HDD, or a Series S scenario in which the lack of RAM relative to the Series X actually puts it as a disadvantage due to the parity clause in place for all gameplay-related features across both devices (namely, the splitscreen situation in Baldur's Gate III).

I'm tempted to say that the second X-Men game part of the three-games licensing deal that Sony and Marvel signed for Wolverine could already come out TODAY on PS5 and be literally the same game as it is going to be on PS6 in 2035, with the only changes coming down to it having minimal RT support on PS5, slightly more on PS5 Pro, as little RT as possible on PS5 Portable, and full raytracing on PS6.

Gone will be the days in which people buy new consoles to play games that would've been impossible on prior hardware. Hell, Ghost of Yotei is coming out next year exclusively on PS5 and you can very clearly tell that they're iterating upon the PS4 engine they built for Tsushima, not overhauling their technology from scratch like they were lucky to do last time with inFAMOUS Second Son thanks to the quicker development cycles back then.

I'm telling you, the PS6 launch games that are undergoing pre-production right now are going to spend 80% of their development time being worked on as PS5 games, and even three, four years into the PS6 lifecycle you're still going to see the tentpole releases from Sony first-party receive PS5 ports, for the entire family of consoles (PS5 Slim, PS5 Pro, PS5 Portable). Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if PS5 became the entry-level Series S-style product for the PlayStation ecosystem, with the Portable being their Switch 2 competitor and PS6 taking over the Pro as just the 4K/8K high fidelity offering.

This line of thinking does ring very true when you consider the $699.99 price tag of the PS5 Pro, and how there's no chance in hell that a PS6 would be able to deliver a big enough technical leap at any cost lower than that. And if I'm certain about one thing, is that a $699.99-$799.99, brand-new console generation won't fly high enough for $400M AAA first-party games to be able to break even. Enter the eternal cross-gen scenario that I've described above.

 

[midnightAI]

The Steam Deck that's been out for over two years and initially sold for $400 already has the power of a PS4. It's using Zen 2 and RDNA2 matching the PS5 in architecture. Something not releasing for another four years or so will be more powerful.

There are already other PC handhelds with more power than the Deck. I guess everyone just keeps comparing to the Switch in their mind when they think of a modern portable. Except the Steam Deck can emulate the Switch and run games better than they run on the native hardware.

The Steam Deck GPU isn't as powerful as the PS4. But that's kinda irrelevant. What people are talking about here is the ability to run native Playstation games on a handheld. We aren't anywhere near the point it can run PS5 games natively, so you drop down there next one, which is PS4 (Pro even). Portal streams PS5 games and should be compatible with PS6 games also so there is zero reasons this handheld couldn't do the same.

Games could be developed to run on this portable of course, so you could still get patched PS5 and PS6 games to run natively if the developers are so inclined, but they wouldnt need to, and games could be developed for handheld only (they may do that if the handheld could manage raytracing)

It's the best of both worlds while keeping costs relatively in check. You get a massive library with the PS4 and still have the ability to play PS5 games and beyond.

(And 'if' they could somehow get PS3, PS2 and PS1 games running native also then that would be a huge win for people wanting older games, but even then, there is still streaming)

 

[awwr999999]

Yeah. They play games made for 10-15 year old hardware.

This. Sony's biggest problem is that their >20 year old PS2 sold >160mil units and is still viewed as the best PlayStation console and the last great gaming leap.
Every time a PS2 game gets ported to PS5 and every time news of a forthcoming remaster/remake breaks - people everywhere are reminded of their dormant PS2s.
It sends would-be PS4/5 users down an offline gaming rabbit hole that contains a lifetime supply of great games, all of which can all be downloaded for free and played off of a PS2 HDD.
Best selling game franchises like GTA continuously pull users back to PS2 and then occasionally force them to buy a new PS (PS3, PS5).
From Sony's POV a PS4/5 owner playing GTA San Andreas on a PS2 looks just like an unused PS4/5.
PS5's SH2 remaster caused a significant decrease in PS4/5 console use via this same phenomenon - reminding people that SH2, SH3 and SH4 are all available on PS2.
The only way Sony can ever get ahead of this problem is by making the PS2 better (adding DualSense) and baking it into the PS5 console.
With 100% PS2/PS1 disc BC on the PS5 Sony will get analytics on how popular the PS2/PS1 are and what games users are playing most.
New release PS2/PS1 games would be digital-only to ensure that users can bring their PS2 game library with them in perpetuity (PS6, 7, 8,...).
Until then Sony's got an unknown number of PS4/5 owners and would-be PS4/5 users using offline PS2 consoles to play offline PS2 games.

 

[Seomel]

Honestly with pssr noe, i can see handheld working now. They need get something around spec of ally x or who knows in years newer version, have it be like 1080p with oled screen and im sure it will be perfectly good device

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Sony has never been good at supporting multiple platforms.

It either just runs PS5 games as they are without updates, or just don’t bother!

 

[Hugare]

Dear DF

There's this thing called Steam Deck that can run current gen games despite being a few years old and no coding to the metal in terms of optimization

"Dedicated version" will probably be similar to the "Deck verified" thing, and due to PS5's hardware just being basic PC stuff, It will probably be easy to do.

It will be fine

 

[Kotaro]

Sony want their fans to buy Horizon for the 10th time

 

[rickybooby87]

This needs to be a base PS5 in terms of performance or they don’t even need to even bother. Will it sell regardless? Sure. But it’ll also put extra strain on developers and those fools are already struggling as is.

 

[PeteBull]

This needs to be a base PS5 in terms of performance or they don’t even need to even bother. Will it sell regardless? Sure. But it’ll also put extra strain on developers and those fools are already struggling as is.

Lets see what ps6 is capable of, in holidays 2028 with likely around 200-250W of powerdraw, handhelds have tiny powerdraw in comparision so we will be able to extrapolate from that, so far for 2025 tech we know what topnotch handheld will be capable of, switch2 according to the leaks is around base ps4 in handheld mode, ps4pr0 in docked mode, thats pretty far from ps5 in handheld mode, about 5-6x weaker.

 

[ArtHands]

I think its funny that the people crying that DF is wrong, is ignoring DF's point of having to reduce the power draw of PS5 from 200+W to 20W in order to makes PS5 playable on a proper handheld.

 

[Rising_Hei]

To me this smells like FUD. A truly PS5 portable will be more than possible in 2-3 years.

 

[SScorpio]

The Steam Deck GPU isn't as powerful as the PS4. But that's kinda irrelevant. What people are talking about here is the ability to run native Playstation games on a handheld. We aren't anywhere near the point it can run PS5 games natively, so you drop down there next one, which is PS4 (Pro even). Portal streams PS5 games and should be compatible with PS6 games also so there is zero reasons this handheld couldn't do the same.

Games could be developed to run on this portable of course, so you could still get patched PS5 and PS6 games to run natively if the developers are so inclined, but they wouldnt need to, and games could be developed for handheld only (they may do that if the handheld could manage raytracing)

It's the best of both worlds while keeping costs relatively in check. You get a massive library with the PS4 and still have the ability to play PS5 games and beyond.

(And 'if' they could somehow get PS3, PS2 and PS1 games running native also then that would be a huge win for people wanting older games, but even then, there is still streaming)

The problem with the portal is that it needs network access to play games. So good luck on a long flight that gives you access to power but WiFi is expensive and limited. Or just playing it on a train/bus commute.

The Steam Deck's screen is 800p, the comparison was graphical settings and the like of the PS4 running at 1080p could be hit at 720p or 800p on the Deck. So if a base PS4 ran this game as 60 fps at 1080p it would be 60 fps on the Deck, 30 fps on the P:S4? Then 30 fps on the Deck.

All of the rumors and rumbling that's come out about this, it doesn't sound like this would be released before the PS6. My argument is that it is plenty of time for the necessary commute performance to hit PS5 levels. Also why would you need native playback of PS1, 2, and 3 games? If Sony continues on their current path and finally releases a PS3 emulator on the PS5. Then all of the PS1, PS2, and PSP games that you can currently buy and run on both your PS4 and PS5 will just work on the new PS5 handheld. The big limitation here is that it;'s limited to digital older games, so due to licensing, studio closures, etc. There are thousands of games that won't make it over. But a large number of the PS4/PS5 PS1 releases were originally released for the PS3/PSP/PSV, and people who bought them there are being able to get the PS4/PS5 license for free. So just having these as game in the ecosystem would make it so it could be continued to be played into the future on the PS6, 7, 8, etc.

I think its funny that the people crying that DF is fun, is ignoring DF's point of having to reduce the power draw of PS5 from 200+W to 20W in order to makes PS5 playable on a proper handheld.

IMO, there's no reason to reduce the power draw of the current hardware. As you increase the clocks to draw out more power from silicon, the power draw exponentially increases and the performance/watt metric plummets. But new architectures give you an increased performance for clock, and I'd wager the PS6 and this possible handheld would both be based on Zen 7 though it might fall back to Zen 6. And it will be 2 gens into whatever AMD ends up calling their new GPU architectures since they are moving on from RDNA. So going with the latest tech, but then massively downclocking it will let you hit the performance target while sipping power. This can already be seen in the PC world, throw away iGPUs can play 8 year old games at resolutions and settings that made enthusiast cards of the time of the game's release sweat.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

ignoring DF's point of having to reduce the power draw of PS5 from 200+W to 20W in order to makes PS5 playable on a proper handheld.

Didn't watch the video, but case in point... from TSMC's own marketing about the nodes, they are saying it's a 30-40% reduction in power from just N3E to N2P. Probably be closer to like 80% reduction from N6 to N2P. That's not even taking into account any kind of an power optimized die.

Now it'd be expensive to do this. N2P is crazy expensive.

 

[RCX]

Cramming a ps5 level machine into, at most, a 30w envelope leads to one of two outcomes

1) less than 90 minute battery life
Or
2) giant battery pack that makes the thing weigh a tonne.

x86 is a tricky thing to shrink down without compromises. Unless sony have some magical x86 emulator running on arm? But I doubt it.

 

[Audiophile]

Something like this by '26 would be fine with me:

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Something like this by '26 would be fine with me:

I'm in line on much of this though a few things I would take pause on.

First the price seems overly ambitious. I think you're looking at 400 and 500 respectively rather than 300 and 400.

If they enabled cloud play for Vita, why would the PS Portal not have access to it? Not sure 512gb is enough. Games generally aren't going to be able to run on SD card, so while you could use it to install games, you're still going to need more onboard storage. This is something Nintendo is probably going to run into issues with.

 

[Zacfoldor]

See how dumb this idea is? PlayStation Series S.

Notice how Nintendo just did the opposite of this with the Switch? Nintendo smart Sony tbd.

 

[Trogdor1123]

sounds like a vita situation

 

[ArtHands]

Didn't watch the video, but case in point... from TSMC's own marketing about the nodes, they are saying it's a 30-40% reduction in power from just N3E to N2P. Probably be closer to like 80% reduction from N6 to N2P. That's not even taking into account any kind of an power optimized die.

Now it'd be expensive to do this. N2P is crazy expensive.

You really should watch the video.

 

[awwr999999]

Cramming a ps5 level machine into, at most, a 30w envelope leads to one of two outcomes
1) less than 90 minute battery life
Or
2) giant battery pack that makes the thing weigh a tonne.
x86 is a tricky thing to shrink down without compromises. Unless sony have some magical x86 emulator running on arm? But I doubt it.

Fast forward to when we can easily put a PS5-level x86 CPU/GPU into a handheld and sell it at the magic price point of $299.
PS5 games are all built for 4k displays with a minimum size of 27in and scaling them down to 720p on a handheld will make them unplayable.
Best case scenario realistically (for a platform that works on TVs and handhelds with no porting) is a handheld running PS2/PS1 games at their native resolution.
Even PS2/PS1 games may not work great without UI tweaks to scale menus, maps and other aspects to the smaller screen.

 

[Perrott]

See how dumb this idea is? PlayStation Series S.

Notice how Nintendo just did the opposite of this with the Switch? Nintendo smart Sony tbd.

The PS5 (2020) was a home console that utilized the latest AMD tech.

The Nintendo Switch (2017) was barely an Xbox 360 (2005) with more RAM; the Nintendo Switch successor (2025) will be a PS4 Pro (2016) without a CPU bottleneck, and with both machine learning and raytracing capabilities.

With that in mind, isn't actually the Nintendo Switch line of consoles the Series S of the videogame industry? And if so, then how exactly would a PlayStation handheld coming out one or two years after the Switch successor be that much of a burden to game development when I bet Final Fantasy VII R******* is already being planned around the limitations of an eventual release on Nintendo's next console?

 

[Loxus]

To me this smells like FUD. A truly PS5 portable will be more than possible in 2-3 years.

But at what price though?

This thing sounds like the price would be a bigger problem than what games it plays.

 

[Panajev2001a]

But at what price though?

This thing sounds like the price would be a bigger problem than what games it plays.

The problem I see is that people will surely demand an HDMI output (Sony can sell a dock for it and/or allow USB-C to connect to monitors and TV) and then we will start the dance of HDR, 4K, VRR, etc… output.

IF this becomes a Steam Deck competitor, I would almost prefer it to be them joining forces with Valve and avoiding fragmentation… but I would fear they would just go Windows…
That would be a gaming handheld but not a PlayStation per se as it would only play PC games… so as much a PlayStation as everything is an Xbox .

IF they go for running PS1/2/4/5(patched?) software, if they were a true next-gen PlayStation Portable with its own BC titles support and new titles ported to it or released with PSP-NG support then Sony is designing their own Series S so they need to be very very very very careful.

This would need not to hold PS5 and maybe PS6 back (unless it did not support PS6 titles unless they were explicitly cross-generation):

I would see it as a device:
- docked vs undocked HW performance profile (faster fan speed, faster clocks, etc…)
- quite a lot of RAM, might not be super mega fast but it would not limit the main consoles; dedicated slower RAM for the OS to minimise fast RAM dedicated for games
- faster / even less CPU overhead / more dedicated silicon for I/O, managing the OS, networking, Sound, etc… try to reduce the amount of CPU reserved while running games
- faster than PS5 I/O to prepare for more and more data I/O heavy games and again minimise cost of swapping data in and out of RAM
- VRR and HDR support on the system display and on external displays
- ML/AI support to allow running PSSR at a lower rendering cost (make it easier for devs to integrate and upgrade PSSR implementation, focus on upscaling from lower than 1080p for these portable optimised PSSR profiles)
- focus on optimising HW for 900-1080p PS5 performance (includes smart upscaling from lower resolutions so I would not say devs need to target native 1080p) ideally with headroom over per pixel performance over PS5 Pro not to hold PS6 back too much (this does not mean faster than PS5 Pro in absolute terms, but faster per pixel might be a better way of putting it)
— as mentioned before same or more (I would say quite a bit more) RAM than PS5
— customised Zen4c or Zen5c equivalent low power but higher single threaded performance cores (8 cores with SMT but higher clockspeed and/or improvements to match or hopefully well exceed PS5 CPU’s IPC)
— beefing up the shared GPU components that do not vary with CU count (rasteriser, geometry engine, shared caches, etc…) compared to PS5 and PS5 Pro (it could be a mix of architectural enhancements, more and/or better caching, and clock speed)
— beef up each of the CUs: you can have and will likely have far less CUs than PS5 Pro but their design should be a more advanced and more powerful version of what we have in PS5 Pro CUs

This could be a good strategy for them not to stretch their software devs and introduce another performance target, not that I would love it, but…

Introduce console generation, wait a few years and release that generation Pro version, wait a few years and release the Portable version, wait a few years and release a next gen console, wait a few years and release the next gen Pro version , wait a few years and release the next gen Portable version, etc…

 

[OuterLimits]

Sure. But point is they are already supporting another system and a handheld. So not sure how this argument holds that they can't support a ps handheld.

The argument holds because we can look at their very own history. Plus they aren't exactly pumping out numerous releases on their most important product.

 

[jm89]

The argument holds because we can look at their very own history.

Their own history is a handheld with aseparate ecosystem, this isn't the same thing as Sony are looking into the current handheld market which consist of devices with unified ecosystems.

Plus they aren't exactly pumping out numerous releases on their most important product.

Uhn ok that's a separate issue with AAA game dev. People will buy these products for not just first party but third party also.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

You really should watch the video.

Don't need to, the whole premise is a bad idea. Sony shouldn't bother unless the handheld can run PS5 games with no or minor changes.

 

[Ronin_7]

Well, this is going to be a failure.

Just like the Portal.

 

[Ronin_7]

But at what price though?

This thing sounds like the price would be a bigger problem than what games it plays.

Did you mean 10 years from now?

You can't reduce 200 watts of power to 15-20 watts within the next 3–4 years. Maybe in 10 years? Sure.

 

[Loxus]

The problem I see is that people will surely demand an HDMI output (Sony can sell a dock for it and/or allow USB-C to connect to monitors and TV) and then we will start the dance of HDR, 4K, VRR, etc… output.

IF this becomes a Steam Deck competitor, I would almost prefer it to be them joining forces with Valve and avoiding fragmentation… but I would fear they would just go Windows…
That would be a gaming handheld but not a PlayStation per se as it would only play PC games… so as much a PlayStation as everything is an Xbox .

IF they go for running PS1/2/4/5(patched?) software, if they were a true next-gen PlayStation Portable with its own BC titles support and new titles ported to it or released with PSP-NG support then Sony is designing their own Series S so they need to be very very very very careful.

This would need not to hold PS5 and maybe PS6 back (unless it did not support PS6 titles unless they were explicitly cross-generation):

I would see it as a device:
- docked vs undocked HW performance profile (faster fan speed, faster clocks, etc…)
- quite a lot of RAM, might not be super mega fast but it would not limit the main consoles; dedicated slower RAM for the OS to minimise fast RAM dedicated for games
- faster / even less CPU overhead / more dedicated silicon for I/O, managing the OS, networking, Sound, etc… try to reduce the amount of CPU reserved while running games
- faster than PS5 I/O to prepare for more and more data I/O heavy games and again minimise cost of swapping data in and out of RAM
- VRR and HDR support on the system display and on external displays
- ML/AI support to allow running PSSR at a lower rendering cost (make it easier for devs to integrate and upgrade PSSR implementation, focus on upscaling from lower than 1080p for these portable optimised PSSR profiles)
- focus on optimising HW for 900-1080p PS5 performance (includes smart upscaling from lower resolutions so I would not say devs need to target native 1080p) ideally with headroom over per pixel performance over PS5 Pro not to hold PS6 back too much (this does not mean faster than PS5 Pro in absolute terms, but faster per pixel might be a better way of putting it)
— as mentioned before same or more (I would say quite a bit more) RAM than PS5
— customised Zen4c or Zen5c equivalent low power but higher single threaded performance cores (8 cores with SMT but higher clockspeed and/or improvements to match or hopefully well exceed PS5 CPU’s IPC)
— beefing up the shared GPU components that do not vary with CU count (rasteriser, geometry engine, shared caches, etc…) compared to PS5 and PS5 Pro (it could be a mix of architectural enhancements, more and/or better caching, and clock speed)
— beef up each of the CUs: you can have and will likely have far less CUs than PS5 Pro but their design should be a more advanced and more powerful version of what we have in PS5 Pro CUs

This could be a good strategy for them not to stretch their software devs and introduce another performance target, not that I would love it, but…

Introduce console generation, wait a few years and release that generation Pro version, wait a few years and release the Portable version, wait a few years and release a next gen console, wait a few years and release the next gen Pro version , wait a few years and release the next gen Portable version, etc…

Would a handheld that docks into a second GPU be possible?

My idea would be two chips.
The first chip would be the main chip, that is detachable from the handheld. This way the handheld can still be used as a PS Potal, with a secondary ARM chip.

Main chip specs:
16 Zen6c cores,
40 UDNA/RDNA5 CUs,
16GB LPDDR6.

The detachable main chip along with its own heatsink, docks into a more powerful GPU via PCIe, with adequate power and cooling.

Secondary chip specs:
80-120 UDNA/RDNA5 CUs,
16-32GB GDDR7W.

Something like this patent from Sony.
Either FIG. 3 or 5.

Sony has another patent that has 4 GPUs working as one, So the possibility is there.

 

[Loxus]

Did you mean 10 years from now?

You can't reduce 200 watts of power to 15-20 watts within the next 3–4 years. Maybe in 10 years? Sure.

I'm not talking about the power consumption.

The cost of tech is going up, not down.
The cost of the tech needed to play PS5 games on a handheld from Sony isn't going to be cheap. Look at the cost of the PS Potal for example.

 

[Astray]

Will be hilarious when the device comes out and works just fine.

DF is completely desperate for those console warrior clicks.

 

[seb85]

Great! Another stupid lowe end device that will limit game development

 

[Bojji]

Dear DF

There's this thing called Steam Deck that can run current gen games despite being a few years old and no coding to the metal in terms of optimization

"Dedicated version" will probably be similar to the "Deck verified" thing, and due to PS5's hardware just being basic PC stuff, It will probably be easy to do.

It will be fine

Steam deck run games that were already designed to run on all spectrum of hardware. Pc games are future proof on the day they release, and usually can run on the hardware that is at least few years old as well.

On consoles you would need to patch the whole library, all PS5 games require ~10TF of power, zen 2 ~3.5GHz and whatever ram is available out of those 16GB. Not to mention very fast SSD and fast I/O hardware.

Handheld like that won't be possible in next 5+ years most likely. Technology is much slower now than in vita times (and vita was much slower than PS3).

 

[Panajev2001a]

Would a handheld that docks into a second GPU be possible?

My idea would be two chips.
The first chip would be the main chip, that is detachable from the handheld. This way the handheld can still be used as a PS Potal, with a secondary ARM chip.

Main chip specs:
16 Zen6c cores,
40 UDNA/RDNA5 CUs,
16GB LPDDR6.

The detachable main chip along with its own heatsink, docks into a more powerful GPU via PCIe, with adequate power and cooling.

Secondary chip specs:
80-120 UDNA/RDNA5 CUs,
16-32GB GDDR7W.

Something like this patent from Sony.
Either FIG. 3 or 5.

Sony has another patent that has 4 GPUs working as one, So the possibility is there.

It is possible but very costly and I am concerned by this being quite a bit of an R&D drain when you have other products in the pipeline and before the concept of a new PlayStation handheld has proven its worth.

I think Sony can sell the main console well enough and at a higher MSRP than it used to, but the handheld would be seen like PSVR2 as an add-on and the answer by consumers seems to be do not cross X price barrier”. Doing and selling together or separate an essentially 2 consoles in one handheld sounds nice, but I feel it is a bit impractical and a detour they may not need for PS6 which is next after that.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Steam deck run games that were already designed to run on all spectrum of hardware. Pc games are future proof on the day they release, and usually can run on the hardware that is at least few years old as well.

On consoles you would need to patch the whole library, all PS5 games require ~10TF of power, zen 2 ~3.5GHz and whatever ram is available out of those 16GB. Not to mention very fast SSD and while I/O hardware.

Handheld like that won't be possible in next 5+ years most likely. Technology is much slower now than in vita times (and vita was much slower than PS3).

Their challenge is not PS5 in a box, it should not compete with PS5 or PS5 Pro when attached to a 4K display.

I think they need to have a few directives on the wall as they design this console, unless it is a handheld PC:

- The Xbox Series S was a bad idea

- Wait a minute are we not building our own Series S?!?

- The Xbox Series S was a bad idea, but why?

I think that a NG Console —> NG Console Pro —> NG Console Handheld as I mentioned above might be their best attempt at getting most of the benefits MS wanted to get with the least amount of side-effects / negatives.
Partially I think it is due to timing (MS tried the idea too early and tried to take Sony in a pincer movement with the base and pro console at the same time and before devs were ready… in a way one of the reasons PS3 struggled) and also the execution.

For me the base console needs to be first, then you perfect it or extend it with a mid generation upgrade as you do your next-generation R&D and then you release your handheld trying to fight a per pixel / per frame quality battle. MS almost did the opposite…

I think PSSR is one key objective for Sony to get right and improve to give this handheld a chance. By the time thing console launches between their dev tools and PSSR libraries they need to get better enough to do something like 540-720p up scaling to 1080p which is likely the target resolution of the handheld screen. VRR is a must for the display (HDR should be too) and maybe their story and devs’ confidence with LFC tech will also be at the point where although it does not have anywhere near the big boy grunt it is as capable or more on a per pixel basis (RT included at a CU level) so to speak and its CPU story is also not bad compared to PS5 but also not shamefully bad compared to PS6.

I think their next generation handheld is when we would see them using new CPU cores at a new manufacturing node. Their target should be heads and shoulders above PS5’s CPU but at a lower power consumption.

 

[ArtHands]

Just like the Portal.

Yah. Sony refuses to share the numbers, and we know what they usually means.

 

[Ronin_7]

Yah. Sony refuses to share the numbers, and we know what they usually means.

You're as delusional as it gets.

Plenty of Data showing it's a massive success but sure.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

You're as delusional as it gets.

Plenty of Data showing it's a massive success but sure.

I forgot he was a troll.

 

[jm89]

Just like the Portal.

I bet alot of the people saying this will be a failure are the exact same people who said the same about the portal.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I bet alot of the people saying this will be a failure are the exact same people who said the same about the portal.

I thought the Portal made no sense and had no market. I was wrong (yeah, it happens, albeit rarely).

I've always contended that a well-made appropriately priced Sony handheld system that used the same library would sell gangbusters though.

 

[jm89]

I thought the Portal made no sense and had no market. I was wrong (yeah, it happens, albeit rarely).

I've always contended that a well-made appropriately priced Sony handheld system that used the same library would sell gangbusters though.

I'm willing to bet a playstation native handheld will absolutely smash anything that isn't a Nintendo handheld in sales.

And tbh that isn't much of a feat when steamdeck sales aren't anything to write home about. So there isn't much of a challenge there. Valve just hasn't got the brand power to push hardware.

 

[mrqs]

The ONLY way this handheld will work is if you are able to run PS5 (or maybe PS4?) versions of the already-built games.

If developers have to create a specific version for dedicated hardware, there's no future to this.