This week’s Digital Foundry Direct Weekly kicks off with first impressions on Sony’s PlayStation Portal, which we received around the same time that the embargo lifted. Since then, the device has already sold out and in my experience, it’s already commanding anything up to a £150 price premium. Well, it’s a bit of a stretch to justify its £199 sticker price and I wouldn’t recommend paying a penny more. When it works, it’s fine, but I can’t help but think that a first-party device from a console manufacturer should not ship in a state where the core quality of the device is entirely reliant on third-party equipment it has no oversight over.
That’s the key thing about console gaming, in my opinion. Every device is the same, so by extension, the gameplay experience should be quantifiably and qualitatively identical for every user. By relying exclusive on its existing Remote Play functionality – a value-added extra, remember – the quality of gameplay on the Portal is reliant on a massive range of factors outside of Sony’s control.
Owing to existing commitments, I’ve only spent a few hours with PlayStation Portal and I’ve only tested it in two scenarios. I’d say that the first scenario is close to perfect conditions: the PlayStation 5 and my home router are within 1m of each other, hooked up via a LAN cable. This means that there’s effectively no latency between the console and the router. Secondly, the Portal itself is within 1-1.5m of the router.
