In an interview with Game File, PlayStation’s vice president of product management Hiromi Wakai spoke about the PlayStation Portal handheld that continues to have many players questioning its existence, while it’s selling out at the same time.
It’s seemingly the most official information we’ve heard on the Portal, in terms of how PlayStation regards the Portal’s success and the thought process behind the whole thing being here in the first place.
Firstly, in terms of sales Wakai doesn’t reveal any concrete numbers, but she does admit that the Portal continues to delightfully surprise with its success. “Although we don’t have any numbers to share, the demand has continued to exceed our expectations.”
As far as why the Portal exists, the throughline for that story is much more tangible now, though the same fans who remain confused this exists over a PS Vita 2 might not love to hear it.
“The original idea of [the] PlayStation Portal remote player came from our goal to provide high quality console gaming experiences in players hands,” Wakai said.
Even with that as the starting point, Wakai makes it clear that the way to achieve that goal was never going to be with a handheld device like the PlayStation Portable or PS Vita.
“The initial discussions of this product started out from the question of how to expand the PS5 console game experience, not launch a separate handheld device,” said Wakai.
Wakai also clarifies that another big part of the Portal’s conceptualization-to-reality track was to not have to ask anything of game developers for it to work. “We also did not want to ask for any additional work from game creators to achieve this goal.”
All this considered it’s a lot easier to see why we have this and not a new PS Vita. The Portal has always been a means of extending the PS5 family of devices, not introducing a whole new platform.
This never stopped fans from having negative reactions to the Portal, which Wakai says they also knew was coming.
“From the beginning, PlayStation Portal was intended to be a product best suited for people with specific needs and those who want to play in a specific way, so the reactions after the announcement were very much within our expectations.”
Source – [Game File]