PlayStation Portal is out but trying to find one is about as arduous as trying to buy a PS5 in late 2020.
low demand low supply
I know people want to implicitly shit on this thing because they don’t personally want one, and I guess they don’t want other people to enjoy them, but come on, this is silly. You know none of that. You just wish it was that.
Honestly, this place was great for a while, but it’s very rapidly devolving into the vapid reddit style comments you see all over that place.
Others have said it already, but it’s the best way to describe it. It’s literally just a screen with a controller attached. You can only use it for remote play on a PlayStation console at home. It doesn’t offer cloud gaming and it doesn’t allow you to even connect to WiFi networks that require you to sign on in a browser before gaining access to the Internet because the thing doesn’t even have a browser included in the software. The only common use case I could see for this thing is if you’re going to a friend’s house as a teen and want to play online games while in person.
Even then, as a parent I would much rather just spend the extra money on a steamdeck or other handheld that has compute and actual software. This is a ripe $200 turd that hardcore PlayStation fans and overzealous scalpers are buying.
The use case is that you live with other people and other people want to use the TV that the ps5 is connected to, and you want to play ps5, and you aren’t a jerk who hogs the TV all the time.
It’s okay, demonstrably people want this, even if you’re mad about it.
I don’t know if that’s a fair criticism. I think I first saw something about this thing yesterday. Not much of a marketing push. I had to look it up to see what the heck it is. It seems to have a very specific and narrow use case. I’m sure it’s a nice option for people with that need and works well enough, but it’s not exactly something the masses are clamoring for. There’s similar tech out there and they are sort of niche products. I don’t expect this thing to be selling like hotcakes.
Naw their criticisms are extremely fair.
When this thing was first announced it was met with mostly people all over going “what’s the point of this thing, nobody is going to buy such a useless thing when they can just play on their phone or some adapter” etc.
Then when the pre-orders where announced to be selling out, it didn’t shift to “people want this thing”, they just pivoted to “they are just lying to hype it up”
And now that it’s sold out everywhere, they have no choice but to either admit it was wanted and they were wrong, or just keep going with the idea that, no, it’s everyone else that is wrong.
I pre-ordered mine back in September. Those of us who game from multiple rooms in their house this thing is amazing. Or those who have to share a TV with people who don’t use the PS5 connected to it.
That’s not a reddit thing though. People make one-offish comments everywhere. Maybe not in your inner circle specifically but in general i’ve seen a lot of forums and chat rooms growing up that are like that.
I’d say low supply but higher than expected demand. If it were low demand, people wouldn’t be having a problem getting one.
Yeah, but Sony isn’t reaping the rewards for it, scalpers are. Artificial scarcity would make sense if Sony were jacking up their prices, but they’re not the ones doing that.
