Sony beforehand unveiled its plans to launch a handheld streaming gadget codenamed Challenge Q. After a interval of silence, we’ve now gotten a greater glimpse of the gadget and its specs. The streaming gadget’s official title is the PlayStation Portal, and it’s set to launch this 12 months with a $199.99 price ticket.

The hand-held has lots of the immersive options of the DualSense controller, together with haptic suggestions and adaptive triggers. It’ll additionally sport an 8-inch LCD display screen able to 1080p decision at 60 FPS.

Who’s the PlayStation Portal for?

Based on Sony, the Portal is for individuals “in households the place they could have to share their lounge TV or just need to play PS5 video games in one other room of the home.” This can be a function that has been accessible since at the least the PS3. Distant play has solely develop into extra accessible since then, and you may simply make the most of this function on PCs, cellular units, and tablets.

Maybe the most important profit comes with the DualSense options which is able to guarantee you possibly can have the complete PS5 expertise even once you’re not in your sofa. Just a few publications have had hands-on expertise with the distant play gadget. IGN reveals that you simply gained’t need to be related to the identical community as your PS5, which suggests you’ll have the ability to use the gadget wherever so long as your PS5 is on and related to the web.

In the event you’re within the Portal, you ought to be conscious that there are some limitations. Most notably, it lacks Bluetooth, you gained’t have the ability to play VR2 video games on it, and it will probably’t entry PlayStation Plus Premium’s cloud streaming. There are additionally common points that come up with distant play, together with latency points and the necessity for a continuing web connection. Lastly – and this ought to be pressured – it’s purely a distant play gadget not able to operating any video games domestically. In the event you’re not related to the web, it’s ineffective.

The shortage of Bluetooth possible isn’t an oversight, as Sony can be utilizing PlayStation Hyperlink wi-fi audio expertise which “delivers low latency, lossless audio and straightforward switching between a number of PlayStation Hyperlink hosts corresponding to PS5 with the USB adapter and PlayStation Portal.” Conveniently for Sony, this seems to restrict customers to utilizing PlayStation Hyperlink-compatible headsets, or settling for wired ones. It’s exhausting to not cringe at this alternative, because the push for proprietary peripherals corresponding to reminiscence playing cards performed a task within the loss of life of PlayStation’s handheld units.

There are nonetheless a couple of unknowns surrounding the gadget. Its battery life hasn’t been confirmed, neither is there an official launch date. The Pulse Elite and Pulse Discover headsets – which, as you’d suspect, leverage PlayStation Hyperlink – are additionally set to launch this 12 months, although no launch date has been given.