PS Portal Will Allow Cloud Streaming in New Beta Update

More of a reason to buy one!

Sure. I’ll give it a go. Been happy with the PS Portal so far…

Not on premium and don't plan to upgrade. In fact I'll probably drop Extra at the end of my current subscription.

Anyway, for me the portal has been a bit of a let down. Could be I'm too rural for this to be a viable device outside of the home. As for the most part, it works almost exclusively as a second controller now. I can't imagine my experience streaming games from a cloud would be much better.

Sooooo once again I guess Australia misses out since we aren’t on the “countries where PS Plus Premium is” list, still slumming it here with the inferior “Deluxe” option… 😾

As far as I'm concerned this makes the Portal it way more valuable. Now, as long as you're a Premium member, you can actually take your Portal away with you and play a ton of games without having to worry about your connection to your PS5. Only decent wifi should be needed.

I used to love this feature when PS Now was on the Vita. It worked really well for me too.

Just in time for a Black Friday sales discount 👀

@Marquez you just use it as normal and other person logs in with a different controller. my wife and I play nba2k together this way. so you're still using wifi but as it's all the same network it's far snappier and more responsive than any place I've tried outside my house.

hopefully that made sense.

I bought a Portal because the wife felt we weren't spending enough time in the same room as a family, we have quite different interests.

It is fine and for the most part it does what it is supposed to, nothing spectacular, can certainly tell I'm streaming rather than playing natively but it still does what I need.

However, I have no interest in cloud based streaming. Even with 500mbps Internet the lag is too much and the break down of the image happens too often for me to enjoy it.

Maybe Portal will prove to be different but I doubt it.

Nice. I’ll give it a go. Have a few trade shows coming up and I’ll be away several days at a time. Hopefully hotel wifi holds up enough for some turn based games.

So you don't need a PS5 to do this cloud streaming thing right? If you have a decent connection and don't care about the occasional lag, wouldn't this eventually make it a budget handheld PS5 as more games are added??

@ATaco but at $160 a year? that's kinda depressing for a budget handheld.

WTF!!!! Now that is cool! How are they bringing this so casual, as if its not a big deal. This is crazy good! We get PS5 gaming on a handheld. If the PS marketing didn’t suck, they would know how to deliver this. But damn, im in! I guess im buying a Portal 😄

Hell yeah, such a great device just got better! Can't wait to try it!

@XanderTigerclaw
Hear you, all this talk about cloud streaming and never comes to Australia. Then again the Sony servers in Australia sometimes struggle as it is with downloading games.
This would be handy since then my wife could play the PS5 local while I am playing on the portal but using cloud streaming.
They increase our prices but don't upgrade the services. Like a lot of things here now not just gaming

@Medic_alert Seriously? Wow, i dont have anywhere near 500mbps but my streams are always good. Never had a problem with it. Was actually pretty amazed how good it works. Now i mostly stream games in PS Plus, cause i dont wanna wait to download games anymore.

….this couldn’t already do this?

I live in Australia but have my ps5 and my account registered/bought in Germany cause that’s where from. Sony doesn’t have cloud streaming here in Aus natively, will I still be able to use it here basically via Germany or might I face a ban because of some ToS violation?

@Medic_alert I hope your PS5 is LAN connected to your router and in the PS5 settings (most important), it’s defaulted to use LAN rather than WIFI 👍🏻

If so your experience sound be excellent 👍🏻

@nessisonett well I guess it could do it... it just didn't until now. why does that seem worse.

Should be a ps plus feature on all tiers.

I cant get over how cool this is, its basically a PS5 handheld! Ive been waiting for this update. Sony basically just created their own streaming handheld device. It went from being an accessory to a full fledged handheld capable of playing PS5 games.

Im sure eventually they’ll make it possible to play everything on PS Plus. Honestly, i don't care if its only streaming. My streaming works perfectly. Very excited about this! 😁

@get2sammyb @ATaco and you'd be limited to the games that are on PS+ with streaming enabled (which is many of them but not all). Can't just buy a new game and stream it.

My 30th Anniversary Portal gets here soon and I'm looking forward to using it, but I'm not exactly sure why I wouldn't just stream the games of my PS5 instead. I mean I get the reasons, but they certainly don't outweigh the fact that I'd rather the games just be played on my PS5, then streamed.

Is it just games in premium or does it include extra as well?

Portal rules! 😂😂😂

Finally!! Bought in on the expectation this would roll out eventually… so much utility once the cloud streaming expands

I have premium but I moved to Australia and game streaming doesn’t work here with my UK account. Portal works great but this update is gonna do nothing for me D; I’m gutted I can’t play Resistance.

@platformjunkie hopefully expands to more countries

@IceClimbersMain Cloud streaming is so much better than Remote play though. First of all there’s no need for a console connection. You can access the cloud directly, similar to Xbox cloud gaming. Your connection with remote play is much more prone to disturbance, especially when playing from far away. Unless you only play in front of ur PS5, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a handheld in my opinion.
With remote play you’re also limited to the games you have installed on ur console.

Edit: Having read ur comment again, i may have misunderstood what you meant. You said you’d rather stream from ur PS5, did u mean you’d rather use Remote play? Atleast that what i thought u meant.

Edit: Never mind, you're saying you’d rather play native instead of stream, i must have misread. But if thats the case, why did you get the Portal?

@Nopushonlybush That sucks man, i do hope Sony expands to your region as well. Actually dont understand why they still havent!

@Loamy first party pro patches have rocked. As have some third party (FF7R). Look at the developers who have the crappy patches. They’re the one to blame. Not Sony.

I'm looking forward to this. As I understand it, my ps5 does not need to be on/ logged in etc for me to make use of the portal.

So, I can save on the electricity bill when streaming to the portal whilst the misses watches who knows what on the TV

Or, (and this could be the big draw for me), I can get my PlayStation fix whilst the PS5 is being used by the kids.

@zupertramp Didn’t even think about that, must have been possible all along. Makes you wonder why they’ve waited until now!

About time, but no dual screen pass. No android can go without but still pass.

Is the cloud streaming feature always going to be for Premium members only, or is it just the Beta that is limited to Premium?

Only if you pay for the most expensive PSPlus tier?

Wasn't paying for the device itself enough?

@Voltan
Premium is for the beta test. There's always the possibility that lower tiers and possibly even your gaming library could be streamable on the cloud eventually. At least, if Sony were smart this is where they'd go next.

This is awesome news.The Portal is one of my most used gaming devices, particularly around fall season when sports are not on television. I absolutely love it.

Couldn't care less what happens with the portal, but I do hope this feature gets rolled out to the playstation app or over web browsers.

@tameshiyaku Web browsers? Do you mean on PC? Because Playstation Cloud is already available for PC

This means I can play the worst version of New Vegas in my bed. Good bye forever.

@Kraven same here. I have one of those jobs that is 95% chill and 5% on fire, so I am glad I can play it on down time. I am actually playing more than one PS game a year now! I also love that it includes all the haptics and rumble.

Finally. Sony following in MS footsteps with streaming. Now make it possible to stream those games via an app and I can stop buying hardware altogether. Already using xCloud and Geforce Now more than my consoles, so yeah.

It’s not clear to me whether the plan is for this to roll out to all PS+ members after the beta, or is this going to always be locked behind PS+ Premium? I assume PS+ Essential games aren’t included?
As a PS+ Extra customer, I sure hope this is eventually rolling out to us.

@Digit2021 It is crazy after so many years (and the fact that Sony actually set up local technical cells to solve our digital delivery capability) that we're still back in the 2000's in terms of internet infrastructure in Australia.

Weird... any way, I was always confused why streaming wasn't out of the box on day one.. and not even discussed. Clearly they thought it was a huge gamble. I don't think it's going to be a game-changer, and I don't think it's a new sony portable (it's a big telephone screen with built-in controller), but i can see it finding a home with some.

@LogicStrikesAgain I don't know what to tell you, i've tried streaming in various forms and it is only ever ok at best. Not a patch on native and i wouldn't even consider bothering away from my home.

@Luigia yes I'm lan connected but there is often a noticeable little stutter with streaming and cloud gaming is always going to be subject to any variability in the connection where ever it comes from in the network.

@Takoweevil sorry boss, no idea what you are on about.

@LikelySatan it's just for PS5 games.

@AK4tywill exactly my thoughts! My Portal is my most played console lately even with my shiny new Pro.

@Medic_alert I figured this out.
Now to play New Vegas in the worst way possible. In my hopes and dreeeeams

I bought the PSPortal, cuz i was a hughe Vita fan - still own and play it till i run out of games and I mainly needed it cuz i travel occasunally and wanted to play something in the hotelroom. It works perfectly depending on the network avaiable (Hotspot on my Phone usually works best).
I always wished for a new fullfledge Handheld from Sony, therefore i was disappointed in the Features for Portal, happy that they increase the value finally. Makes me hope for a new Handheld from Sony in the future.

This is truly a game changer! My only issue with psportal is that it doesn't play anything natively (which we knew from the beginning). I just wish it could play even some simple games when one doesn't have access to the internet. Or read pdf files. It'd be perfect while traveling.

@Medic_alert sorry to hear this. I separated my router to 2.5Ghz and 5G GHz putting the Portal 5Ghz and other devices onto 2.5Ghz, which seemed to smooth things out.

@naruball I don't bring my tablet on travels, but reading pdf on smartphone is perfectly fine. Portal widescreen makes it unfit anyway for pdf

@dimi it depends on the text, I guess. Every time I read something that has footnotes (in academia you can't skip them), I have a hard time reading it on smartphone even though I have a phone with a large screen.

@LogicStrikesAgain there's a pc application, but it runs pretty poorly and doesn't give you access to the full library. Actually the stream library over the windows app has not been updated in ages.
It'd be better to just have access over the playstation web site instead of having to install another shoddy windows/mac program but also develop a good game streaming app for android/iOS.

@Takoweevil not mad, just think they should finally make the game streaming option accessible and worth the premium subscription by giving all users access to it via a dedicated app and/or web browser support rather than gatekeeping it to portal buyers. The portal has the extra plus of utilising dualsense features, which is cool but not essential. Especially when considering that 3rd party remote play apps (pxplay & chiaki) offer a more reliable and better looking streaming experience than what the software on the portal provides.

I'm baffled as to why it wasn't supported at launch, surely that's a major purpose of such a device and actually opens it up to none PS5 owners as well.

I have seen the Portal in action and was really impressed by it but it does have one fatal flaw, it doesn't support multiple users, making it kind of useless for me

This is great news and makes the Portal even more worth getting now, hopefully the whole Playstation Plus Extra/Premium catalog will be available later on. And then next year the capability to stream games we own that aren't on PS Plus.

@Luigia it is not bad, just not perfect and I wouldn't play games that require decent response time on it.

Fine for Balatro, Stardew, Vampire survivors etc.

@Yusuo are… are you okay 👀😅

I was only saying yesterday it would be nice if the Portal could stream PS3 games.
This is a good step in the right direction for sure

For PS Portal, cloud streaming probably works better than local PS5 streaming:

• The cloud encoder will likely encode with 60 Hz which is optimal for PS Portal, not the 59.94 Hz of the PS5 encoder which causes the infamous PS Portal Stutters.
• The PS5 (Pro) seems to use the Remote Play hardware of the PS4 Pro, which was an updated version (allows 1080p streaming) of the PS4 Remote Play hardware. In comparison, cloud streaming can use a state-of-the-art codec, with optimal settings for the PS Portal.

The effect: stutterfree streaming with sharper image quality.

The latency though?

@Max_the_German I just fired up GTAV on cloud streaming and it seems to work a lot better than local remote play.
I have the same issue with my Xbox. XCloud works so well, where as remote play can be hit or miss.
Probably my home network set up, but at least I have options now

Only PS portable I'd be interested in would be one that doesn't need to be connected to the internet 24-7 to be of any use.
One that you can use on a plane while going on holiday for instance, he says looking at the PSP 3000 and Vita Slim nearby...

Game changer

Getting a trophy is funny. Just says "Gold trophy unlocked" lol

Here is a great video in German, testing the update 4.0.0:

• Micro stutters with local play are COMPLETELY GONE, „completely new feeling“, tested with FC 24 and Rayman Legends
• Latency with cloud streaming is significant, I would consider it unacceptable.

https://youtu.be/RGUpeXaZBgg?si=xMkwzlo5IF2KtoMc

YAY! This is massive (for me anyway). A Portal was the top item on my Christmas list already, even for Remote Play - which works better than it has ever done on on my phone and tablet.
But i have long harboured a hope that the Portal could support streaming but that Sony had not enabled that at first due to their cautious move into game streaming.
Streaming is probably the best feature of PS Plus Premium to me - i use it to jump into games on the service in a whim. But adding it to Portal makes it truly a portable device to take travelling.

@carlos82 Sony have been quite circumspect in relation to game streaming, i guess to ensure to calbrate cloud capacity and protect the user experience. MS can leverage their Azure capacity whereas for Sony the infrastructure it is additional overhead.

@Marquez lol sure thing bro.

@Medic_alert cool and I played Cyberpunk 2077 and loved the portal experience

@Takoweevil wow, I'm impressed how you're understanding lacks any nuance 😂
Must be a blissful existence.

Just bought a Portal this last weekend there and have to say I absolutely love the thing. Can see cloud steaming shifting a fair few more units feels that's a massive update.

@Luigia I'm glad people are getting use out of it. I maintain it is a bit of an odd device and would have preferred something with a way to play natively but I can see the direction the wind is blowing.

As the tech improves there will be a smaller and smaller percentage of people that care enough for it to matter until we are streaming everything.

I just tested the new update 4.0.0 with locally playing Astro‘s Playroom. I used this for testing all PS Portal updates, because it has a very clean image, fluidity and timing are crucial for this game, and problems are immediately noticeable. I also tested Doom 2016.

What can I say? Sony, mission accomplished! That‘s the experience I expected from the first day.

• Fluid 60 fps, with only rare frame drops
• Pristine image quality, no compression visible
• Latency is most noticable in menus, while Astro gameplay is totally fine. For Doom, the latency is too high

So while I‘d wish to see lower latency in future updates, I‘m pretty certain that this is the best we will get in this regard, and that the PS Portal experience will not significantly change in future.

heres hoping ps3 gets added soon as the beta progresses. that would be the main reason for it

@Max_the_German if they have managed to eliminate those stutters that would be great!

I can see them frequently even on much more simple games.

After seeing this article, just bought a Portal from Game Collection for £180 (using some of my points).
Their current price is £184.95

Sure, i'll be seen as a muppet by some for getting one, but might as well utilise my Premium sub (which recently got its annual renewal) to its fullest.

As someone who opts to play Switch handheld often at home with something playing on the TV in the background, curious to see how much more I'll play my PS5 as such through the Portal and if it'll take over from Switch.

Had a portal at launch, had terrible lag, latency issue's. Obviously my Internet wasn't upto it I don't know. But I sold it on

Working great for me, and something I was keen to see implemented.

PSA re: exiting games: for some reason the home button does not function during cloud streaming, you need to access quick menu (swipe left from top right of screen - you will then have option to close game).

@XanderTigerclaw aww man, I was just playing. A commentary that Aussies continuously gets the short end of the stick

I'll get my 30th anniversary version tommorrow.

How is the remote play with a PS5 Pro? I still want a handheld that can play PS4/PS4 Pro games.

I would've gotten a portal had it not been for the fact that every time I turned it on to 'remote play' my PS5 would turn my TV/monitor on. The PS4 (on remote play iOS app) did not do this even if HDMI-CEC was on - which I will not be turning off. The PS5 needs a code update whereby it knows it is remote playing and not send an HDMI-out signal.

If the streaming reviews are decen, then I will buy one for myself in December.

@Yusuo lol yeah I got it, all good 😸