While much of the world is talking about the Apple Vision Pro, those who are always looking for the “next great handheld” were greeted with some potentially exciting news. According to a video from Moore’s Law Is Dead, Sony is potentially working on a PS Vita 2, of sorts. This comes as a bit of a surprise considering that the PlayStation Portal is still impossible to find without having to pay scalper prices.
However, it’s unlikely that this handheld would actually be a successor to the beloved PS Vita. Instead, the video explains that it could be “a PlayStation 6 Family handheld,” which isn’t scheduled to arrive at least for another couple of years. Specific details are so scarce that the actual design has not yet been finalized, and in all likelihood, the Portal is being used to test the waters.
In terms of performance, the video explains that Sony is working with AMD to essentially shrink the power of a PS4 into the size of a handheld. But, the exciting part is that Sony is also trying to maintain backward compatibility with current and last-gen consoles. This means that we could effectively end up with a portable Sony handheld console that’s capable of playing PlayStation games, and not just streaming them from your PS5 at home.
This is something that Xbox fans have been hoping to see, with The Phawx having covered the potential and benefits of an Xbox-branded gaming handheld almost a year ago. In his video, The Phawx explains that Microsoft has already laid the groundwork for a handheld thanks to the Xbox Series S. The Series S is capable of playing all of the same games as the Series X, just without the higher-end graphical fidelity found on the more expensive console.
There’s definitely an argument to be made that you can already do this with Windows handhelds such as the Lenovo Legion Go or OneXPlayer 2 Pro. However, the reality is that while it is possible to download games, provided you have Game Pass Ultimate, Windows still isn’t the greatest experience on a handheld device. Instead, we’re imagining a handheld that boots into an interface similar to what you see on an Xbox or even the native Xbox app in Windows.
Now, you might be wondering why Sony didn’t just do this with the PlayStation Portal, especially given the current state of the handheld market. The answer to that is pretty simple, as it would probably just be too expensive. The handheld itself could have been priced at anywhere between $500 and $1,000, but on top of that, Sony would have needed to get developers on board to make sure that games would run on less powerful hardware. This is the roadblock that Sony could have avoided if it had gone the Xbox Series S/X route when the PS5 launched. Unlike the PS4 and PS4 Pro, the PS5 and PS5 Slim are identical in terms of the processing and graphical horsepower found under the hood.
Rounding things out, Moore’s Law reiterates that “there is a new PlayStation Handheld in early development.” Even in a perfect world, there’s still a decent chance that Sony reaches a certain point in the development process and decides to ditch the project altogether. While this would be extremely disappointing, it also wouldn’t come as much of a shock.
What do you think about a potential PS Vita 2 running fully-fledged PS4 and PS5 games? Let us know in the comments below, and chat with us in our Discord!
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