Oh look, here's the cloud/remote player that Sony should have launched. Except this one is by Logitech, unveiled at its LogiPlay event yesterday. It supports Xbox (cloud streaming and remote play), Steam and other PC games via cloud, but not PlayStation. Instead Sony keeps shuffling us down the smartphone adapter route, which is just about a solution, but far from the best.
And the strange thing is, I doubt these will sell more less than a 100,000 units but be considered a success. Sony needs to stop worrying about selling 50-100 million and deliver what people are asking for, and plenty of other device makers are producing. (See the new Razer 5G portable too)
The specs for the
G Cloud include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G (SD720G) octa-core CPU running Android 11 at up to 2.3GHz, a full HD 7-inch IPS LCD display with multitouch, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but no 5G, so you're stuck to home or office (or hotspot), plus TF/SD card for storage on top of 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage.
The dimensions make it around 3-inches longer and an inch taller than the Vita, which isn't too bad. And it looks good, a little pricey for a streamer, but I'm tempted, especially thanks to the
Lime-Vita style accents, and would snap it up if would enable me to play PS5 games on the go.
The G Cloud looks pretty smooth and Logitech should be professional enough to source decent mechanicals for the controls. Which just begs the question, why not license PlayStation access from Sony and open your $300 gadget up across the entire gaming market? (That's going up to $349 after the launch period, which is approaching Steam Deck pricing).
I wonder if the Windows PlayStation Remote Play app can be fudged to launched on this, but that seems unlikely. Or why not offer to play Nintendo's cloud games? So much opportunity wasted in a decent looking gadget that might sell a few but could be awesome if it did everything!
If even Sony's Xperia division are
afraid of doing a proper remote play device, perhaps the Vita experience has scarred the company's executive branch for life? With the Switch,
Steam Deck and
Evercade, plus a batch of other handhelds finding strength in the marketplace, Sony continues to look very out-of-touch by running (and not learning) from its past.
