It might not be among the handheld PCs that seem like all the rage these days, but PlayStation's Portal handheld console does seem to have found its audience. Especially when it introduced remote cloud streaming without a PS5 console attached, its userbase grew by a large amount.
In a new PlayStation Blog post, Sony boasts that the user count in January for the PS Portal grew a whopping 162%, with 50% of all Portal users now having a PS Plus Premium subscription, which is primarily designed to help cloud streaming. In the same post, we got a look at some nice improvements for the system.
A new, high quality 1080p mode has been introduced, surpassing the default 1080p mode and giving us a smooth, high-fidelity visual experience if our internet is up for it. The overall cloud streaming experience is also set to become a lot smoother.
There's an improved product detail page with new UI that lets you pick games from bundles if you have them, game invites will be displayed properly, trophy notifications will offer more clarity, and the search screen has been improved, too. Throw in a smoother onboarding experience for the PlayStation Portal, even if you don't have a PS account already, and this seems like a good deal of advancements for a handheld that is slowly, but steadily, finding its gap in a saturated market.
This update is live now for PS Portal owners.