Sony has announced a brand new version of the PlayStation Portal that contains internal storage, a fairly big change to the device. But there’s a catch: it’s only available in Japan and South Korea, and is locked to those respective regions and languages.
The new PlayStation Portal comes in Midnight Black and will be available from December 10, 2026 for 39,980 yen/₩378,000, which is the same price it currently retails for.
But here’s the really interesting addition: the new version will have expanded internal storage which will allow for what Sony calls “future functionality.” Weirdly, despite the release being so close, Sony doesn’t offer any details on how much storage is included in the new version, nor even a hint toward what the future functionality might be.
In 2024, Google’s security researchers managed to get a PSP emulator running locally on a Portal and in the process discovered there was 6GB of flash memory free. Sony has it locked down so it isn’t normally accessible, but in the case of Google, they managed to get Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Tekken 6 running locally on the Portal. According to them, it was quite smooth.
This naturally raises some very interesting questions about what the Portal could actually do with some expanded memory. Could Sony be gearing up to allow the Portal to play a limited selection of games locally on its own hardware? Right now, the Portal is a streaming device that lets you stream games without needing a console, or remotely access them from your PS5. Being able to play even a small selection of titles locally would be a pretty awesome addition.
Or it could be something simpler: the current 6gb of free memory may be reserved entirely for the operating system for future updates and just headroom in case. The expanded storage might be to allow for gameplay clips, screenshots etc to be saved locally, rather than to the cloud where they are kept for 14 days before being automatically deleted.
And then there’s the name change. The Japanese and South Korean announcements don’t make it clear whether the name change is global or just for those two regions, but the name is being changed from the PlayStation Portal Remote Player to the PlayStation Portal Player. Sony says this is to reflect the fact that it is no longer just a remote player, but now also allows streaming of games via cloud.
However, the name change could also reflect future plans as well. Again, that’s just speculation.
All of this is extra fascinating when you consider that it’s heavily rumoured the next-gen PlayStation will include some sort of handheld device as well.
For now, this new version of the Portal is intended only for Japan and South Korea. Both versions are locked to Japanese and South Korean accounts, and only have those languages. That doesn’t mean they cannot be used here, but it makes it considerably more difficult.
It’s also difficult to determine if this new version will make it to the Western market. Sony has previously launched new hardware and hardware revisions in Japan and South Korea before releasing them globally. For example, it launched the PS Vita Slim, which had increased storage, in Japan first. Many other hardware revisions, though, have actually launched in US first. And there’s also a history of Japan getting unique hardware variations that never launch elswhere, such as the Japanse-only PS5.
