PlayStation Portal: A Portal to Nowhere

Sony's PlayStation Portal is less a bold leap into handheld gaming and more a confused stumble that faceplants on arrival. At first glance, you might be fooled into thinking this device is the long-overdue successor to the beloved PSP or a bold contender to the Nintendo Switch. But you'd be dead wrong. The Portal doesn’t even try to stand on its own — it leans entirely on the existence of a PlayStation 5 to function. Yes, this glorified screen with controller grips can’t do anything unless it's tethered to a console you already own.

This isn’t a handheld console. It’s a remote play gimmick.

Want to game on the go? Forget it. No cloud gaming, no local installs, no offline play — just remote access to a PS5 over Wi-Fi, which means your experience lives and dies by your internet connection. Lag, disconnections, resolution drops — all common symptoms of a device pretending to be more than it is.

Sony had one job: deliver a portable PlayStation experience. We didn’t ask for the moon — just a device that could play games without needing a $500 machine humming in the background like life support. Instead, the Portal feels like a tech demo masquerading as a product, launched by a company that once revolutionized handheld gaming with the PSP and PS Vita.

Meanwhile, the Nintendo Switch continues to thrive, offering on-the-go, untethered gaming with an ever-growing library. Valve’s Steam Deck pushes the boundaries of mobile PC gaming. And then there’s the Portal: a $200 door to nowhere unless you’re home, on stable Wi-Fi, and feel like screen-mirroring your PS5 in the next room.

In a world full of innovative handhelds, the PlayStation Portal is a regression — a frustrating reminder of what could have been, had Sony actually shown up to compete