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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 to hit the 10% (currently 7%-ish) adoption rate among PS5 owners that would make it a bone fide hit gadget.   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 cool. Assuming the 120HZ streaming is solid, an OLED would be the more welcome addition, especially with the latest generation of technology offering QD-OLED (Quantum Dot-OLED), WOLED (White-OLED) and other buzzy titles for smarter display.  Whatever ...

Vita devs get more memory, but how will they use it?

According to a slide shown off at a Tokyo Unity Developer event, the recent Vita 3.50 firmware update had a positive side effect for the system. While most of us moaned about losing features, it turns out that the change frees up some extra 30% system RAM for games to use, (when coded in Unity at least, possibly generally).


Now, if Sony had bothered to mention that at the time, I'm sure we wouldn't have minded the trade off. Of course, the change only creates more questions, rather than solves any issues straight away:


  • Will any current games get a patch to boost performance? (Unlikely, most dev teams have moved on and retro fitting a tightly-coded game isn't as simple as going, 'hey - more space')
  • How much will new games be "better" thanks to the extra headroom? Guess we could find out with Resident Evil Revelations 2.
  • When did Sony tell its own developers about this and what games will take advantage?
  • What is the extra available RAM actually useful for? I'm guessing not GPU effects, but it could mean smoother gameplay, less loading, a bit deeper AI or a few more characters in a scene. 

What else do you think could benefit from the change. Guess it won't change the developer landscape in the west one bit, but indies could now port more games with less restrictions and optimisation needed. Any developers care to weigh in?

The PSP got a sort of similar mid-life upgrade with Sony unlocking some extra CPU power, I don't recall many games that clearly took advantage of it, so I'm not expecting wonders.

Currently playing on my Vita/PS3/PS4/PS5


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