With the Nintendo Switch 2 leading the way for handheld games consoles, and Microsoft getting in on the act with Xbox-branded third-party devices, portable console gaming is all the rage again.
Which is why any hint that Sony might rejoin the scene with a next-generation PSP is swiftly latched onto by PlayStation fans and the wider gaming industry alike.
The online scuttlebutt reached fever pitch last week when Sony added a new and rather impressive power-saving mode to the PS5 consoles in a new firmware release. In tests conducted by Digital Foundry, certain games ran 50% more efficiently. Right now it can be used on Death Stranding 2, Days Gone: Remastered, and Demon’s Souls.
Fans took that data and suggested this might be a way to get the best PS5 games running efficiently enough to be played on a handheld console, which wouldn’t be able to rock the same chips and maintain and semblance of decent battery life while staying at a safe temperature.
Now Digital Foundry (via Eurogamer) says its unlikely Sony is using this feature to prepare gamers for a new PlayStation Portable. In a video outlining the feature, DF says that even by reducing the energy load by half, those games still consumed around 100W of power – far in excess of what a current handheld could handle. DF says that’d have to be around 15W and that would require a much greater power saving overall.
The site does say the new Power Saving profile could be a means for developers to “get to grips with the key limitations of what this handheld will require.” But much more would need to be done to make a handheld feasible.
Sony could easily make better use of its Wi-Fi connected PlayStation Portal handheld, which is currently primarily useful as a Remote Play device, to play games from a home console. With Sony leaning more into the streaming of PlayStation Plus games, it could easily enable Wi-Fi streaming of a wider range of games over the cloud. So far that doesn’t seem to be in the pipeline outside of a limited number of PS Plus games.
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