Forget the PlayStation Portal, as now Sony is reportedly working on a new handheld that will let you play your PS5 games anywhere

Just don’t expect to have one in your hands anytime soon.

Image credit:Sony

Handhelds are clearly going to continue coming back in a big way, as now even Sony is reportedly developing a proper, non-cloud based portable console.

Where Nintendo goes, everyone else follows. It’s a tale as old as time, really, even right back to Nintendo and Sony’s partnership to make a console that never materialised (or, well, never materialised as a partnership anyway). Sony obviously later made a PSP after Nintendo found years of success in the handheld market, and while it did well, the PS Vita didn’t, leaving Sony to exit the portable console game until the PS Portal arrived last year. That one only works via the cloud though, meaning you need a good internet connection to play it. Except as now reported by Bloomberg , Sony is apparently working on a new handheld that you can take anywhere, and you’ll even be able to play your PS5 games on it.

Bloomberg also said that the people it spoke with claimed the PS Portal was originally intended to work like Valve’s Steam Deck, a standalone unit that can play games without needing to be connected to the internet, but there wasn’t any reasoning offered as to why it ultimately went the route of being cloud based.

There’s been rumours about a dedicated handheld device from Sony for a little while now, which really isn’t surprising considering how popular the Switch has been. But if it’s designed to play PS5 games, I can only assume that like the Steam Deck it will be a digital-only console. Sony is clearly going the digital-only route, as the base PS5 Pro doesn’t come with a disc reader, so you might want to mentally prepare for that shift.