Gamers go wild for rumoured upcoming PlayStation portable – but there’s a catch

RUMOURS about possible new PlayStation consoles have been surfacing following the release of internal documents.

Many have speculated that a PS5 Pro is on the horizon, now that the console is in its third year.

There’s an even more far-fetched idea that the PS6 could be in development.

However, as the PS5 has only just become widely available due to a global chip shortage, industry experts find these ideas a bit hard to believe.

There is one piece of hardware that it wouldn’t be implausible for Sony to be developing.

Following the financial failure of the PlayStation Vita, Sony dropped out of the handheld market, believing that gamers weren’t interested in portable consoles.

However, a decade has passed since Sony removed its support from the Vita not long after its launch.

Since then Nintendo has seen amazing success with its hybrid console the Nintendo Switch.

Even the portable only version, the Switch Lite, has seen impressive sales figures.

Last year, Valve released its own handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck, that also launched with great success.

Following these popular launches, rumours began about whether PlayStation would once again enter the handheld space.

With rumours that PlayStation is developing new hardware, it seemed likely that portable was the direction that Sony was heading.

However, according to industry expert Jeff Grubb on Twitter, the only handheld console Sony is considering will be nothing like the Vita.

Instead he believes that the new portable will be for cloud streaming only, where games are not downloaded onto the system.

This would be similar to how Google Stadia operated, and would likely work in connection with PS Plus.

PlayStation completely overhauled PS Plus last year and is always looking to promote its subscription service.

Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.