Sony Drops A Game-Changing PS Portal Update

Sony is attempting to make the Portal a much better deal for gamers. On April 9, Sony released a massive PS Portal update that sorts games, records gameplay, waits in line for full servers, and offers more seamless cloud streaming with auto-pause and inactivity alerts.

This significant update for the PS Portal adds UX and cloud game streaming enhancements, and also features the ability to sort games and support gameplay capture. This is Sony's most major PS Portal update since the PS Portal Cloud Streaming (Beta) launch.

So here is the list of enhancements. You can sort games on the cloud streaming catalog screen. There will be a new sort icon on the top left corner, which will allow you to sort games by name and release date that were recently added to PS Plus. Then, there is captured gameplay. Your create button on your PS portal will now be live during the cloud streaming session, and if you press it once, you will display the create menu. If you press and hold, you can take a screenshot.

If you hit it twice, you can start/end recording a video clip. They're doing a queue. Now, you can wait for your turn to play when the streaming server is packed. The waiting time will be displayed on the screen, and the game session will automatically start as soon as it's your turn. They're also introducing a pause where it says during a cloud streaming game session, gameplay will now pause in the following situations.

The gameplay will pause while opening the PS portal quick menu. You can open the quick menu by pressing the PS button, swiping left from the top-right corner of your screen, or clicking the quick menu icon from the status bar. Pressing the power button once will put PS Portal into rest mode and pause the game.

You can continue playing by pressing the power button once more. The PS Portal, being in rest mode for more than 15 seconds, will lead to the termination of the cloud streaming session. Gameplay will be further cut off when a system error message is displayed on the screen at the bottom. And then there's an inactivity notification.

You will be presented with a system notification when your streaming session ends because you have not been active for more than 10 minutes, and the user feedback screen will appear. Sony has included a user feedback screen at the end of the streaming session so you can rate how good your streaming experience has been, so that they can keep improving. It's quite a massive update for the PlayStation Portal.

Again, it's worth remembering that when this product was initially revealed and announced, cloud streaming simply wasn't a part of it. It's something that Sony opened up over time, and the frequency of its updates has increased as well. So yes, these modifications definitely make the PS portal a better deal overall, better for anybody who already owns one, and possibly more appealing to others.