The Resurgence of Portable Gaming: A New Era of Freedom

The rumors of Sony bringing back the PSP handheld console have sparked excitement in the gaming community. As portable gaming makes a comeback, we explore the history of handheld consoles and what the future holds.

The Resurgence of Portable Gaming: A New Era of Freedom

The rumors of Sony bringing back the PSP handheld console have sent shockwaves of excitement through the gaming community. As someone who has always preferred portable consoles to home ones, I couldn’t be more thrilled. My first games console was a Game Boy Color, and since then, I’ve been hooked on the freedom that portable gaming provides.

Playing on the go was like having a mobile phone today - you could play whenever and wherever you wanted, as long as the batteries lasted. It was a great way to ignore people without being too rude.

I didn’t get another new portable console until the PSP, which I loved. Later, I moved on to the PS Vita, but by that time, portable consoles were falling out of fashion. Many casual gamers no longer saw the point of them, especially with the rise of smartphones. But then Nintendo made the Switch, and it was both the death of traditional portables and the birth of a new type.

I love my Switch, but the best thing about it is that it led to the creation of the Steam Deck, which in turn led to the Asus ROG Ally and a ton of similar devices. Now we’ve got tons of copycats, and there are rumors of Xbox making a hybrid portable for the next gen and Sony bringing back the PSP!

My only concern is that back in the pre-Switch days, portable games were usually quite different from ones meant to be played at home. A Switch or Steam Deck game isn’t made specifically to be played in handheld mode; it’s just an ordinary home game that happens to work on a portable. I would like to see Nintendo and Sony create at least some new games that are made specifically to be played on the move, like they used to be.

Other than that, I am ready to welcome back portable consoles from every company and ask why they ever went away?

“I love my Switch, but the best thing about it is that it led to the creation of the Steam Deck, which in turn led to the Asus ROG Ally and a ton of similar devices.”