DF Weekly: PlayStation Portal's quality is reliant on your home network set-up

This week’s Digital Foundry Direct Weekly kicks off with first impressions on Sony’s PlayStation Portal, which we received around the same time that the embargo lifted. Since then, the device has already sold out and in my experience, it’s already commanding anything up to a £150 price premium. Well, it’s a bit of a stretch to justify its £199 sticker price and I wouldn’t recommend paying a penny more. When it works, it’s fine, but I can’t help but think that a first-party device from a console manufacturer should not ship in a state where the core quality of the device is entirely reliant on third-party equipment it has no oversight over.

That’s the key thing about console gaming, in my opinion. Every device is the same, so by extension, the gameplay experience should be quantifiably and qualitatively identical for every user. By relying exclusive on its existing Remote Play functionality – a value-added extra, remember – the quality of gameplay on the Portal is reliant on a massive range of factors outside of Sony’s control.

Owing to existing commitments, I’ve only spent a few hours with PlayStation Portal and I’ve only tested it in two scenarios. I’d say that the first scenario is close to perfect conditions: the PlayStation 5 and my home router are within 1m of each other, hooked up via a LAN cable. This means that there’s effectively no latency between the console and the router. Secondly, the Portal itself is within 1-1.5m of the router.

0:00:00 Introduction0:00:52 News 01: PlayStation Portal first impressions!0:26:47 News 02: New Suicide Squad deep dive video lands0:45:01 News 03: RetroTink 4K to cost $750 USD1:00:42 News 04: EA WRC PC update1:08:59 News 05: Steam Deck OLED vs ROG Ally!1:25:12 News 06: John’s continuing Meta Quest adventures1:37:23 Supporter Q1: Will we ever see an arcade racing resurgence?1:43:53 Supporter Q2: Did Starfield ship ‘unoptimised’? Why did it take so long to improve performance and add DLSS?1:54:27 Supporter Q3: Is it possible Nintendo’s next console will be a traditional home system?1:58:30 Supporter Q4: Is the Xbox One the only console to be obsoleted completely by its successor?2:04:19 Supporter Q5: Will you ever do a retrospective on failed past consoles, like the Ouya?

In this scenario, the Portal works OK. By placing the Portal in front of my LG OLED CX running the console directly in low latency game mode, using Gran Turismo 7’s on-screen timer, I can see that there’s about 60ms of extra lag. That’s not too bad, but definitely noticeable. Essentially, a 60fps game like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 running in performance mode feels like a 30fps experience, but it’s OK – just not great. Bothersome are the banding artefacts, smearing in fast movement and occasional frame-drops. And that’s in what I’d describe as a best case scenario.