Sony announced a new update for its PlayStation Portal handheld device, adding a few basic features to the Cloud Streaming beta that PlayStation Plus Premium members can access.
The Cloud Streaming beta was introduced in November 2024. At the time, it was just a bare-bones introduction to using the Portal to stream available titles over the cloud instead of directly streaming them from your PS5 console.
Wednesday's update brings a few basic features to the cloud streaming experience, like sorting the available games in the cloud streaming catalog alphabetically, by release date, or how recently they were added to the PS Plus catalog.
You can also now take game captures while playing a game through cloud streaming on your PS Portal, which works the same way it does when taking a screenshot while playing anything on your PS5 or PS Portal.
This update also allows you to pause a cloud-streaming gameplay session, allowing you to put the PlayStation Portal in rest mode with the game paused, though you can't leave the Portal in rest mode for longer than 15 seconds. The cloud streaming session will disconnect once that timer runs out. Similarly, if you've just set your Portal down without pausing the session, after 10 minutes of inactivity, a warning message will appear in the top-right corner of your screen to tell you that the cloud-streaming session will be closed in 60 seconds.
The last two features the update adds are a queue screen you'll be sent to when the streaming server for a game is full. Your wait time will be displayed on the screen, and you'll launch into the game once it's your turn. Lastly, this update adds the ability for you to provide feedback to PlayStation and Sony about the cloud streaming beta through five simple emoticons that let you share your satisfaction with the service from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.
It's still surprising that the PlayStation Portal didn't support cloud streaming from the jump, but at least we can be glad it's here now. However, the addition of some of these fundamental features still shows the glacial pace at which Sony is adopting cloud streaming despite making a handheld that seems purpose-built for it.
