So I asked a few friends that are very much casual gamers (3 in total). All of them believed the PS Portal could playing PS4 & 5 games from both Disc and digital download. All of them where shocked when I mentioned it’s streaming only, you need a PS5 (turn on) and a Internet connection.
They quickly changed their mind on the product but where excited to get one for Christmas before hand. I think this is will happen to a lot of people , call it misleading or consumers not looking into the product either way I thought it was interesting.
I was kind of wondering if it would sell well to uninformed people and then see a lot of returns when they realized how it works. Hard to say.
Finally saw a photo of the box - and it DOES say remote player & it has a smallish thing saying it requires a console, but I guarantee parents / grandparents who don’t know anything about gaming will buy these assuming it just will work to play games.
To give credit to Sony I still feel their marketing is quite clear, perhaps they could make the ‘PS5 required’ statement clearer.
Based on previous products (PSP & Vita) I can see why people could get confused, especially based on the price of this thing (which IMO would suggest some native gaming is available instead of it just being overpriced!).
Not to belabor the comparison, but this reminds me of how reportedly one of the reasons the Wii U didn’t do too well is because it confused consumers who thought it was just a tablet add-on to the Wii.
I guess we’ll see if that anecdote matches this one.
If it’s like the remote play PS app on my phone, the remote play turns on my PS5, fans and all. I have to make sure my cabinet door is open. I had a remote play session from work a few weeks ago, and when I got home the PS5 was on and it was HOT because the cabinet door was closed.
