The PSP’s successor will surprise the whole world. It will be able to run games from PS5!

• Sony is working on a PSP successor that will natively run PS5 games
• The company wants to compete with Nintendo and is responding to the success of Steam Deck
• The new console is still in the early stages of development and its launch is not in sight

It looks like Sony is about to get back into the portable game console market. As Bloomberg reported, the Japanese giant is working on a new handheld console that should natively run games from PlayStation 5. However, this is not in the near future – the project is still in the early stages of development and its launch is not expected for several years at the earliest.

Unlike last year’s PlayStation Portal, which only works as a streaming device for the PS5, the new console should be full-fledged standalone handheld. The interesting thing is that, according to Bloomberg sources, the Portal was originally supposed to be a separate device similar to the Steam Deck, but in the end these plans were dropped for unspecified reasons.

Current PS Portal:

After all, Sony has a lot of experience with portable consoles – the PSP became the only real competition for Nintendo in the handheld segment, selling over 76 million units. The successor to the PS Vita was not so successful, and with approximately 16 million units sold, it fell short of expectations.

Technological challenges

While a few years ago, creating a portable console capable of running PS5 games would have been a considerable challenge, the current development of mobile chips shows that it is not unrealistic. For example, the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite can run demanding PC games like Cyberpunk 2077 at 60 FPS despite emulation. And we’re talking about a chip designed primarily for phones, not specialized gaming hardware.

Sony has several options in this regard. One of them is the use of an ARM chip, similar to what Nintendo did with the Switch, and personally it would make more sense to me. The second (and also more likely) way could be collaboration with AMD on a chip combining Zen 4/Zen 5 architectures with RDNA graphics. Here, however, the company would have to wait for it to be made available 2nm manufacturing process at TSMCwhich would mean the horizon of 2026-2027.

In both cases, advanced upscaling technologies would play a key role. Be it PSSR (PlayStation Super Resolution), AMD FSR or any other solution, it would certainly help to achieve a quality image while maintaining reasonable power consumption. A bigger challenge than the hardware itself could be the software side of things – developers would have to specially optimize their games for the new platform.

The competition does not sleep

Sony is not the only company planning to enter the handheld market. Microsoft recently through the mouth of the head of the game division Phil Spencer confirmed work on a portable Xbox consolewhich is also several years away. Next year, Nintendo is expected to introduce a successor to the popular Switch.

The portable gaming market has seen a major revival in recent years thanks to the success of the Steam Deck and other Windows handhelds like the ROG Ally. This trend could be one of the reasons why Sony decided to return to the segment. The question remains whether the project will actually be completed. According to Bloomberg’s sources, the company may decide not to launch the console at all during development. The definitive decision will probably depend on the development of technology and the market situation in the following years.

Would you buy a portable console from Sony?

Source: Bloomberg