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Possible new PlayStation Portal model pays homage to the Vita's OLED

While much of the focus on PlayStation's next steps is the PS6 and PS6 Portable , the two-year old PlayStation Portal could be getting a revamp according to those pesky internet rumours.  Update : Hints at pricing are around £/$250-299 for the new model, but everything remains deeply in rumours territory. Presumably the goal is to hit the 10% (currently 7%-ish) adoption rate among PS5 owners, something that would make it a bone fide hit gadget.   The recent February  PlayStation State of Play  saw no announcement. But, PlayStation needs to make Portal more a core member of the PS5 family, rather than the distant cousin that most of its appearances suggest.  As the improvement in connectivity and streaming tech, proven by many gamers enjoying their PS5 or PlayStation Plus streamed content from around the world, an updated Portal Pro could be on the cards.  Possibly featuring a 120Hz display and an OLED screen in honour of the mighty Vita, that'd be coo...

PS Vita Teardown - torn to pieces...

Serious people with a wide range of tiny screwdrivers love taking gadgets to pieces and costing up the parts. UBN has done that with the PSV (note, you have to pay for the full report) and come up with an approximate overall parts list of:



Display and touch components: $50
Other components: $30
CXD5315GG Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU: $16
BB+XCR: $16.25
Non-electronic: $11
Supporting materials: $10
SDRAM: $9.25
NAND: $6
Battery: $3.60
Cameras: $3.50
Wi-Fi/BT/GPS: $3.50

So, roughly $160 or £100 which, of course, doesn't include Sony's massive marketing expenses, research and development costs and so on. Even so, perhaps Sony isn't get such a massive haircut on the hardware units after all. It will certainly rake in lots of cash on the memory cards which cost just a few bucks each and are sold at a decent markup.

What this does mean is that Sony can afford a price cut in 2012, it is just a matter of market pressure on the company to do so. That will come from a poor western launch, continued weak sales in Japan and stores threatening to discount on their own.




Currently playing on my Vita/PS3/PS4/PS5


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