Sony has officially unveiled the PlayStation Portal, and as a cloud-exclusive Remote Play handheld device, it’s obviously got a few caveats attached. The fact that it can’t play native games – or any native media – is, of course, one of them, while it’s also been confirmed that even the cloud library of PlayStation Plus Premium won’t be supported.
In addition, it’s also been confirmed that the PlayStation Portal won’t have Bluetooth. As reported by The Verge, that means users won’t be able to pair the PS5’s Pulse 3D wireless headset with the handheld device. The newly-revealed Pulse Elite headset and Pulse Explorer earbuds will be supported, but you’ll have to connect them using Remote Play. If you want to use them on a PS5, you’ll have to do so via a USB adapter.
My take is that it’s complete BS to release a “portable gaming handheld” without Bluetooth support out of the box.
Most of us already have wireless headphones for our mobile devices and making gamers buy proprietary headphones/earbuds that cost nearly as the device, and let’s be honest only this device because no other device is going to use this PlayStation link protocol, is also complete BS and I honestly think it’s anti-consumer.
But it’s not a portable gaming handheld, is a PS5 controller with a screen. Think of it as the Wii U controller. You need a PS5 console and stay close to that console, outside the PS5 range is completely useless since the PlayStation Portal does not run games.
Hence the quotes. The only thing that it that it’s supposed to work with any connection as long as the PS5 is connected to the Internet with their remote play capability, which it’s like Steam Link, which unless you have a symetric home Internet, isn’t exactly great.