A successor to the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and PlayStation Vita are rumored to be in development at Sony. The company is working on a dedicated handheld PS5 system designed to compete with Valve’s Steam Deck and Nintendo’s upcoming Switch 2.
According to an article written in Bloomberg, this handheld PS5 portable system is still years away from arriving on the market, if it does at all. Yet, there is a possibility that Sony may cancel it. The report states that the PlayStation Portal, a product that exists to stream PS games to a handheld screen, was originally planned to be a similar product to the Steam Deck before focusing on streaming. However, a new update for the PlayStation Portal has introduced a cloud-streaming beta for members of PS Plus Premium. This means a PS5 will not be required to play games on the device.
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Sony is not alone in desiring to expand to the handheld market. Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has been quite open about his desires for an Xbox handheld, yet it also a few years out. Meanwhile, the odds are good that Nintendo will likely unveil the Switch 2 in the coming months, and the company confirmed the system will be backwards compatible with Switch 1 games earlier this month.
A possible PS5 portable system would see Sony returning to the handheld market for the first time since the launch of the PS Vita back in 2011 (arriving in North America in early 2012). The system was discontinued in Japan in 2019, prior to the release of the PS5.
Before this, the PlayStation Portable released in Japan in 2004 and North America in 2005. This Sony handheld competed with Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS throughout the mid-to-late 2000s.