Sony hasn’t been in the handheld gaming market since they stopped producing the PlayStation Vita in 2019, but if new reports are to be believed, the company is planning to return to the space in the coming years. Coming from YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead (and spotted by WCCFTech), he reports that Sony is in fact working on a new PlayStation handheld system (which I’ll refer to as the Vita 2 for simplicity’s sake) and that it’ll be compatible with PS4 and PS5 games.
According to Moore’s Law Is Dead, the PlayStation Vita 2 is being made with support from AMD and is currently in the High Level Design Phase. This means that the handheld hasn’t been greenlit yet and is at least two years away from being released if it is. All PS4 games would be natively compatible with the Vita 2, but PS5 games would need to be receive a special patch from their developers in order to work on the device. As for the specs of the Vita 2, Moore’s Law doesn’t have any concrete details at this time.
He also mentions the possibility that it could be released as part of the PlayStation 6 family of devices as a portable and weaker companion to the core PlayStation 6 console. If this was the case, it’s possible that developers would be able to make their PlayStation 6 games run natively on the Vita 2, albeit at lower specs. And similar to the Vita 2, Moore’s Law Is Dead also confirms that the PlayStation 6 is being made with support from AMD, but does not have any solid details when it comes to the console’s specs.
For years I’ve seen people ask for Sony to return to the handheld gaming space and make another Vita, and while I was part of that crowd for a time, I’ve changed my tune in recent years for a few reasons. First off, I would hate to see Sony release another handheld device just to not support it again, just like they failed to support the Vita throughout its life. Supporting multiple platforms is a problem that Sony has had, so it would be a shame for them to repeat past mistakes. Secondly, there’s the fact that I wouldn’t want their first-party PlayStation Studios teams to be split between developing games for console and a handheld device. PlayStation’s first-party teams have been thriving by focusing solely on one platform and I don’t want that success to waver because they have to support a separate, weaker device.
What I would be okay with though is a handheld device that’s similar to the Steam Deck in terms of functionality. If this Vita 2 is just a handheld device that plays all your games on the go natively, without any cloud streaming involved, just at a lower spec, I’d be completely on board with it. I don’t want to see PlayStation’s games suffer with regard to ambition and scope, which is something that would happen if a Vita 2 had a separate library or was a hybrid system like the Nintendo Switch. But if this handheld allows developers to make the games push boundaries on console the way they want, and then also run on a handheld at a lower spec similar to the way the Steam Deck works, then this could be a great move for Sony.
Handheld gaming has come back in a big way ever since the Switch rose to success. Nintendo’s hybrid console directly lead to the creation of the Steam Deck, the ASUS ROG, and will lead to the release of a Switch 2 in the near future. With the demand for handheld gaming proving itself more and more everyday, it just makes sense that Sony would want to return to the space. They’ve already tiptoed into it with the PlayStation Portal, so clearly they’re interested. With this rumored Vita 2, they’ll be able to properly deliver on their former promise of console quality games on the go.
Of course, nothing is actually official right now and likely won’t be for years to come. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get excited at the idea of Sony returning to the handheld space with a Vita 2 in this way. As for the near future, Sony’s recent State of Play gave us a glimpse of what we could look forward to on PS5 and PS VR2 in the near future. There are still plenty of questions about the future of PlayStation though that we’ll hopefully get answers to soon.
TheComfySpot 