Sony is now making its PlayStation Portal handheld even more useful. It’s not limited to local streaming anymore: you can now use it to play PS5 games from anywhere with cloud gaming.
Cloud streaming on the PlayStation Portal is rolling out in the United States, with Europe to follow on Wednesday. Sony launched its cloud streaming feature on PS4, PS5, and PC in 2024, but the PlayStation Portal only had the ability to stream games from a PS5 console on the same local network. With this change, stream select games from Sony’s servers, similar to Xbox Cloud Gaming.
A PlayStation Portal system update has been released with support for streaming select PS5 games from the PlayStation Plus game catalog, including Dave the Diver, Ghost of Tsushima, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Monster Hunter Rise, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Unfortunately, streaming any PS4 and PS3 titles is unsupported at this moment.
After updating the Portal’s software, you need to turn on support for cloud gaming. To do so, access the console’s quick menu and choose the Settings option. From there, select the Cloud Streaming (Beta) button and then enable” Switch the Cloud Streaming (Beta).”
“After you’ve enabled Cloud Streaming (Beta) in the settings menu, you should see a new option on the Home screen of your PS Portal that allows you to access games via cloud streaming,” Sony notes. “The beta option can be turned off any time, and your Home screen will revert back to the standard version once the option is turned off.”
To take advantage of enhanced cloud streaming, you must also have an account for PlayStation Network and be an active PlayStation Plus Premium subscriber. This is not such a bad deal despite having to commit to an $18/month subscription because PlayStation Plus Premium includes perks like support for online multiplayer games, a gigantic roster of cloud titles, cloud storage, a catalog of PS classics, exclusive discounts, and more.
Sony says cloud streaming requires a minimum 7 Mbps connection, which gives you a rather fuzzy 720p stream. Bumping up streaming quality to 1080p and 60 frames per second requires a minimum 13 Mbps connection. Higher resolutions are unsupported, as are certain PlayStation Plus features like party voice chat, game trials, 3D audio, in-game commerce, child accounts, and more.
Cloud streaming is currently available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Source: Sony
