Sony is reportedly working on a new PlayStation handheld that plays PS5 games

After months of rumors and speculation that Sony might want to re-enter the handheld gaming space, a new report has revealed that the company has started development on an all-new product. 

According to a report from Bloomberg, Sony is currently working on the development of a new PlayStation handheld gaming console, said to be a competitor to the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 and a possible Xbox handheld device. The report says that Sony’s handheld gaming machine is still likely “years away from launch,” and that there’s no guarantee it actually makes it to market. 

If the report is to be believed, the device would be able to play PS5 games out of the box, though it’s not currently known how this would work, given the relatively high system specifications of the PS5 itself, which couldn’t easily be translated into mobile specs. It’s possible that such a device could be focused more on playing PS4 games alongside a selection of PS5 games, or it could run PS5 games at lower settings, much like the Xbox Series S does compared to its more powerful counterpart, the Xbox Series X. 

Sony has dabbled in handheld gaming somewhat in the years since the PlayStation Vita’s commercial failure, with a bigger focus on cloud streaming via PlayStation Now – which has since been rolled into higher tiers of PlayStation Plus – and the launch of the PlayStation Portal last year. The Portal required tethering to a PS5, since it relied on PS Remote Play, but has recently been updated with a beta version of PS cloud streaming, eliminating the need for extra hardware. 

Ahead of the PS Portal’s announcement last year, fans were convinced that the rumored PlayStation handheld was a Vita 2, something that was sadly shot down by industry insiders at the time. Still, it looks like Sony heard the desires of those fans, and is at least exploring the possibility of re-entering the market. 

Whatever the device ends up being, if it does make it to market it will have fierce competition from Nintendo’s successor to the Switch, which is set to be announced before April 1, 2025 and released sometime next year. Nintendo has stayed quiet on the upcoming launch so far, but it has confirmed that the Switch 2 will have backwards compatibility with Switch games, something that’s sure to give it a leg-up with thousands of high-quality games available on the console on day one.