PlayStation Announces New Portal Model With Internal Storage

New PlayStation Portal Gets A Name Change And An Internal Storage Tease PlayStation Published Nov 9, 2026, 4:37 AM EST Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. The PlayStation Portal is low-key one of the biggest wins the Sony studio has pulled off during this back half of the PS5 generation. A handheld device that it continues to update to the point that it’s far better than the product that launched three years ago. Those updates keep on coming too, with the biggest one yet just announced. The trouble is, there’s a catch. Well, actually, there are a few of them. PlayStation Announced via the PlayStation Blog, a new model of the Midnight Black PS Portal is being released on December 10, 2026. The first catch, and it’s the biggest of them all, is that this new model will only be released in Japan. The new Portal will cost 39,980 yen, so around $250, which is the same amount as a standard model currently costs in the US. It comes with a month of PS Plus Premium, the subscription tier you need to stream games directly from the Cloud to your Portal without being tethered to a PS5. The blog post even notes that the Portal is the perfect way to play PS5 games without owning a console, which is the first time I’ve seen PlayStation push that agenda, even though an update has made that possible on all Portals. It has even changed the device’s name, starting with this new model, from PlayStation Portal Remote Player to simply PlayStation Portal Player. A PlayStation Portal With Internal Storage PlayStation It’s a note towards the end of the post that sets this new model apart from the older ones, and is why a whole new model needs to be released rather than simply rolling out an update for pre-existing ones. “Furthermore, with an eye towards future functionality, the new model includes additional internal storage,” the blog reads. Even though the new Portal’s release is only a month away, it adds that more details will be revealed about the device’s new storage capabilities when they’re finalized. The implication of that is the new Portal will actually be able to have a game or two stored on it that can be played anywhere. No PS5 tether needed, and perhaps no WiFi connection needed to stream games from the Cloud either. There is a healthy, and warranted, amount of skepticism surrounding what exactly the internal storage comment might mean. If it means what it implies, then the Portal takes one step closer to becoming a standalone PlayStation handheld. That seems unlikely, though, unless the Portal has been completely overhauled and is somehow now able to run games without the help of streaming. This also feels like another way to get more people into the PlayStation ecosystem without making new consoles. The reason PlayStation doesn’t want to make new consoles right now is because RAM and storage cost a fortune, so putting a significant amount of it into these new Portals feels like an odd move.