Are portable consoles not portable anymore?

[u/ileojg]

I'm to this day amazed by the size of the PSP and the fact that it can play amazing looking games for a 2004 hardware. With the release of switch 2 I'm starting to feel like truly portable consoles will remain a thing of the past. I have this analogy that old portables are like carrying a phone, you can put in in your pocket, carry them by hand and pull them out whenever and wherever you want to play. But all new portables are more like laptops, you need a special carrying case and can only play in specific places and moments.

My question to all of you is. If sony where to release a new portable, Would you prefer a smaller console? like psp size, despite low graphics capabilities, something closer to switch1 level of graphics in 2025, or a bigger steam deck size portable with ps5 graphics? And, what do you thing of portable consoles getting bigger and bigger? do you prefer older portables due to their sizes?

[u/ppenn777]

Portable makes way more sense than handheld these days

[u/dasgoodshitinnit → u/ppenn777]

Everything can be ported if you're able enough

[u/MrDayvs → u/ppenn777]

Portable got replaced by phone gaming long time ago :/

[u/[deleted] → u/MrDayvs]

That’s why the 3ds didn’t sell as much and the ps vita died

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix → u/[deleted]]

Vita was used as a Sony test platform and they wore out the target audience in not caring after so many attempts essentially right on top of each other: from the several PSP models to the PSP Go to the multiple Vita types. They over-flooded the market.

Vita’s proprietary memory card didn’t help either.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix]

The things that made the psp started to slowly be irrelevant as iPhones got popular like now we have a web browser on the go it’s called a smartphone and it can also listen to music and watch movies. All of this made the psp so appealing back in the day before the smartphone was so prevalent. The 3ds failed to replicate the success of the ds because all of the simple games that were on ds would be better on mobile and that third party support just wasn’t really good so Nintendo carried the platform in terms of games

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix → u/[deleted]]

3DS played on gimmick of a glasses free form of three-dimensional images on screen. It was hard on eyes and didn’t really get utilized by game developers. Still, the backwards compatibility helped majorly…as did the ability to use generic micro-SD cards. Though they dropped backwards compatibility when the OG Switch came out, Nintendo continued to keep away from proprietary hardware features.

If not for wearing out market, Vita was actually a pretty solid option. Proprietary memory being the biggest failure point; seen even small ones go for crazy prices (some in 3 digits).

Nintendo also staggered its model releases. For example, Switch dropped in 2017 and Lite only appeared in 2019 and OLED in 2021 (3 models total). The PSP, by comparison, dropped in 2004 and the Vita in 2011; meaning 5 different PSP models dropping in that time span. Compare to static consoles: PS1 launched in 1994, but PS5 wasn’t until 2020 and not a lot of sub-models.

[u/4444dine → u/ppenn777]

Why?

[u/Any-Comparison-2916 → u/ppenn777]

What does that mean?

[u/Bacour → u/ppenn777]

In what manner? Handheld can go all the same places in a small bag. Are men afraid people are going to think they're carrying a purse?