Sony Consoles and Updates

[DANGERMAN]

Sony are pulling Twitter /X support, so you can't post directly from PlayStation consoles any more. On account of how awful Twitter has become 

[one-armed dwarf]

To be honest it's amazing there's not a better system for uploading and sharing screenshots. 

 

Apparently you can use the PS app for this as well, and send them to yourself or something. But it will only work with PS5 games.

[regemond]

Yeah you can choose to upload to the app and from there download to your phone. It's dead easy to be fair, but doesn't work on system menus etc (same as Xbox in that regard).

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Nag]

Scalpers be having a field day...😉

[Snaggletooth]

Lets hope they get stuck with them, always some mug who buys them at the inflated price though. 

[one-armed dwarf]

It's such a highly specific niche item that it's strange that scalpers are even bothering. 

[one-armed dwarf]

DF have a writeup on it, and they strongly recommend looking into your home network situation if getting one of these. Depending on how you use it anyway

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-df-weekly-playstation-portals-quality-scales-with-the-quality-of-your-home-network-set-up

[Maryokutai]

I saw Ed Boon re-tweeting a clip of MK1 on Portal and describing it as "running on Playstation Portal", with a bunch of comments saying that it looks better than on Switch. I think there's a significant portion of the mainstream audience that doesn't realise this is just dead weight without a PS5 and a router connected to it.

 

Most frequently returned hardware on January 2nd?

[one-armed dwarf]

I doubt that's very likely, but the home network situation might be an unexpected level of friction for some folks for sure, given how many people will be using their POS router from 15 years ago that their ISP gives everyone. 

 

Was surprised to learn that the Portal does not have a mode to connect directly to PS5 via some access point, it's all on wifi

[DisturbedSwan]

There's 41 million PS5 owners out there now, is it really a surprise that they've sold out? Pretty much all I heard from the negative corners of the internet is that this is a niche within a niche, there was almost a baying hope that it falls flat on its arse, and now its sold out, the easy excuse to why things didn't go as these people hoped, yep must be scalpers lol.

 

I've never really agreed with the niche within a niche theory anyway. How many 25+ blokes with partners have to share the tele and are amongst that 41 million figure that already own PS5's? Most likely quite a few so that ability to play your PS5 when your spouse/OH is watching some mindless shit on TV is priceless to some, like myself.

 

As I think the only person on here that has one, I've been incredibly impressed and surprised by it. I have withheld my views up to now as no one really cares on here and have made up their own minds anyway, of course the Sony shill is going to like it anyway, right? lol.

 

But I guess fuck it, it's the best handheld I've ever used. The build quality is incredibly good, it's ridiculously comfortable to hold in the hands as it's just a split DualSense and doesn't cut any corners for better portability. The screen is way WAY better than I thought it would be, being just an LCD screen as well. Having all the DualSense features in it is just magnificent as well, being able to feel all the hits etc. in a game rather than feeling some lifeless controller in your hands makes such a huge difference.

 

The best thing about it though is that the latency seems much improved over my previous Remote Play setup (iPad with DualSense connected to it). I don't really know why that is, the Portal connects straight to the WiFi in my house rather than runs off my PS5 WiFi and there's no bluetooth connection running between a DualSense and a screen, it's all in one (if that makes sense) so there's no secondary signal coming that may affect the latency and connection between the Portal and PS5.

 

This may sound like bollocks but if you walked into my house and saw me on the Portal, I showed you it running, I don't think you'd even realise it's being streamed from the PS5, you'd think it was running natively, it's that impressive in person.

 

I read that your upload speed affects the latency you get rather than download speed? So I guess my upload speed might be good too, I'm not really sure, I only have a BT fibre 75MBps line, no Virgin 500GB fibre or anything but those are download figures anyway.

[one-armed dwarf]

My dude the reason people are talking about scalpers in this thread is cause you literally linked an article about scalpers, did you read your link? lol

[DisturbedSwan]

It was an article about the Portal selling out with one paragraph about scalpers lol, I guess it makes more sense now though, I hadn't put 2 and 2 together.

[one-armed dwarf]

By the way, it won't be your internet connection speed that impacts your experience here. Mostly depends on your local home network. The devices connected to your router, walls between the devices. The capabilities of the router itself, which can be a shitshow with some providers if you don't go third party. You're right that your experience is probably not a niche at all, I agree. But it's fair to say I think that there's a hugely subjective factor to this device which gives it a massive caveat emptor for lots of people, one which is outside of Sony's control

 

Fortunately you can 'try' the portal by using remote play via your phone. If it's dogshit, it probably won't be much better on Portal as it is using the same software to achieve its aim. Based on what Digital Foundry have said anyway.

 

I sort of went through a whole hassle with setting up a third party router for my Quest 2 PC streaming, it can be a pain. I still don't have an ideal setup, lots of occasional micro stutter (which sucks in VR). Which has kinda overtime killed my enthusiasm for quest 2. Apparently wifi 6 is heaps better, but I don't want to buy that just yet

[mfnick]

I’ve actually done a bit of a 180 on this. Lately my partner has been really ill & off work a lot & is now staying up a lot later and hogging the TV a lot more. So I’ve ended up using the Switch a bit more. But this would be much more preferable as the games on PS5 appeal a lot more along with general performance increases and loading benefits on multi format games. 
 

Now I still wouldn’t be interested in AAA games like Spider Man 2 on it since that would be a big drop compared to through the big OLED TV & surround sound. But stuff like Live A Live or even something more narrative led like Witcher 3 or Balders Gate 3 I could see using this a bit. 
 

I still can’t justify that price tag though. Arguments can (rightly) be made for it being cheap for a screen and dual sense but it’s just way too high for what it actually does IMO. If it ever gets a price drop or a voucher goes around dropping it to £150, maybe… I wouldn’t be angry about getting it as a Xmas present too. By the time that happens my partner should - hopefully - be better so it’d end up being pointless for me again. 
 

Id really want to try it out first too. If it’s at all laggy on my connection then it’s completely useless. But there’s no way of trying it as far as I know so that’s a huge knock against it too. & it’s far too expensive to just buy and try. 

Edit

 

8 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Fortunately you can 'try' the portal by using remote play via your phone. If it's dogshit, it probably won't be much better on Portal

I didn’t realise this. Will try that before even giving it another thought. I’ve tried the Xbox through my iPad and it’s terrible so can imagine this is the same. 

[DisturbedSwan]

12 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Fortunately you can 'try' the portal by using remote play via your phone. If it's dogshit, it probably won't be much better on Portal as it is using the same software to achieve its aim. Based on what Digital Foundry have said anyway.

 

I wouldn't personally recommend this as a good test, on my phone and iPad remote play wasn't great, just about serviceable with skips frequently and lots of lag. On the Portal I have next to no issues at all in comparison. I can't explain why this is the case, but I have significantly less latency on the Portal, same home network setup etc.

[one-armed dwarf]

Just now, DisturbedSwan said:

 

I wouldn't personally recommend this as a good test, on my phone and iPad remote play wasn't great, just about serviceable with skips frequently and lots of lag. On the Portal I have next to no issues at all in comparison. I can't explain why, but I have significantly less latency on the Portal, same home network setup etc.

 

Well it's what Digital Foundry recommend, and it's a hell of an outlay to just hope that it all works. The thing about this is none of us can replicate whatever your environment is, and if there's a reason why people seem down on this device it's cause it's a high price for something with this level of uncertainty and unpredictability wrt how it scales to users own homes and technology setups. Not cause everyone hates Sony or whatever. Sony can't control this aspect

 

(timestamped)

 

[HandsomeDead]

I just haven't seen anyone in the gaming normie-sphere talk about this thing.  Even the Steamdeck penetrated into it a little as a curiosity.

 

If they've sold out I can only see it as it having a limited run and scalpers hoping it'll be a hot item but this isn't going to be a PS5 situation.