close
close

Does cloud gaming on the PlayStation Portal mean the end for consoles?

Does cloud gaming on the PlayStation Portal mean the end for consoles?

However, since cloud streaming for Portal is in beta, many features are missing. Users won’t be able to play “streaming games purchased from the PS Store” – only those included in the subscription-based Premium catalog – and it’s limited to PS5 titles. PS3 and PS4 games are specifically excluded, which seems a bit strange.

Trial versions of games are also locked out, as are some system features such as party voice chat, 3D audio support or “in-game commerce”. It’s best to leave the latter out for now – the last thing anyone wants is a disconnect that could potentially derail a real money DLC transaction.

Sony says games can be streamed in up to 1080p Full HD quality at 60 frames per second, with saved data also able to be transferred via the cloud. The key, however, is “Up to” – you need an upload/download speed of at least 5 Mbps to even set up a cloud gaming session, with at least 7 Mbps for 720p quality and 13 Mbps for 1080p. s are required. Realistically, based on similar game streaming services and the Portal’s own performance even on a home network, it’s safe to assume that even higher speeds will be required for a usable experience.

End of the console era?

The timing is particularly interesting here. When introduced, Portal was essentially an evolution of the same Remote Play feature that Sony has offered in various versions for decades – PSP used the first version of the technology back in 2006 to connect to the PS3, followed by pairing the PS Vita with PS3 and PS4.

These days, almost any device with a screen, an internet connection, and a paired controller can use Remote Play to stream a mirror of your PS5 – Portal was just a dedicated kit for that. The introduction of cloud gaming may make Portal a little more feature-rich, but it may also indicate a growing trend among console makers to abandon console entirely.

Take Sony’s arch-gaming competitor Microsoft – its current marketing claim is that almost everything is “an Xbox.” A big part of it depends on accessing Xbox services “using cloud gaming,” turning any device with a screen, an internet connection, and a paired controller (sound familiar?) into an Xbox.

Nintendo has now allowed certain games to launch on the Switch as cloud-only titles, and while this is usually limited to titles that are typically too demanding or large to run natively on the Switch (e.g Resident Evil Village or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy), it shows that even the notoriously conservative Japanese company is not averse to at least experimenting with games that only exist in the ether.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *