Sony once again targets the niche with handheld accessibility | column

According to the usually reliable Insider Gaming, Sony is said to be working on QLite, a device that takes full advantage of PlayStation 5’s Remote Play feature. This is a feature that Sony has been trying to improve (since the Vita, coincidentally or not). The PlayStation at home simply plays the game, but the signal is sent to another device over the Internet, so you can control your console remotely. The Q Lite would be that device in this case: the mobile device would only support Remote Play, nothing else.

If these rumors are true, I think Sony only makes a device that’s really useful for a very small group of gamers. With only Remote Play supported, the pool of potential customers who can take advantage of it becomes very small.

First, it’s only for people who already own a PlayStation 5. The Q Lite will not support cloud streaming. Without a controller that sends the signal, it is absolutely useless. A mobile device on which you can stream the PlayStation Plus catalog may still be of interest to people without a PlayStation who want to try Sony exclusives, but that won’t be the issue here.

In addition, it is only useful if you have good internet. This may be an open door, but it’s still something to keep in mind, especially for people who don’t live in a well-connected country like the Netherlands. There are a lot of people whose internet connection is not stable enough to maintain connection to the console while on the road. Even in the Netherlands you don’t have enough coverage everywhere on the train.

Then the Q Lite should come in particularly handy in a home situation, for times when you want to play on your PlayStation, but the TV is busy, for example, or if you really need to relieve yourself. It doesn’t happen very often, which makes mobile devices redundant for a large portion of potential customers.

If you still belong to a limited group of people who would benefit from Q Lite, there are actually plenty of alternatives that can do the same. Remote Play works great on your laptop, or you can stream it to your phone with a controller or a good grip. Last year, Sony itself had a workhorse version licensedwhich turns your iPhone into a remote playback device.

Of course we are dealing with rumors here and Sony has not confirmed the existence of this device. It may have been worked on at one time, but the Q Lite has been canceled — or will be canceled internally before it’s ever announced. This is the downside of this kind of rumor: you can never blindly trust it, and even if it is true, it is still useless sometimes. After all, companies can change their strategy at any time.

In any case, this wouldn’t be the first time Sony focused on a niche market. Many people thought: why start? You need look no further than the recently released PlayStation VR2. After a short period of media attention, the brand new headset quickly faded into the background.

Virtual reality, certainly in the coming years, is still a niche. You have to have the space in your house, pay a good deal of money for it, completely immerse yourself in a somewhat clumsy headset, and then settle for a relatively limited selection of games. Don’t get me wrong: I’m personally a huge fan of virtual reality, but there’s no denying that it’s a niche.

However, Sony is fully committed to that. The first PS VR was very popular, especially relatively in the small VR market, but it wasn’t really such a sales smash that a Sony sequel necessarily made sense.

I have a feeling Sony doesn’t always mind if tens of millions of copies of its new hardware don’t immediately fly over the counter. As long as the product is good in their wallet, they make some people happy with it and make a little money. For example, think back to PlayStation TV, the device that allowed you to play Vita games on your TV. Nobody pretended this would bring in millions, so why even start it? Well, because sometimes it’s nice to provide the specialized service.

Perhaps we should also be glad that Sony apparently isn’t working on the Vita 2. Can it compete with the Nintendo Switch, the company the original Vita fought against? And what about new competitors like Steam Deck or just announced ROG ally?

Sony also has a hand in dropping support for these kinds of niche products if they stay in place for too long. Games for the first PS VR headset dried up after a while, and the Vita didn’t get as many exclusives as we’d hoped either. As much as I loved this gadget as a standalone machine (or a Persona 4 gold machine), the promise of console-worthy games on the go was sadly limited to a handful of titles.

Still, I’m glad Sony continues to take these nonsensical steps now and then, even if they don’t always work out so well. I am so grateful to have Vita at all and have so many fond memories of that little creature. Personally, I am very satisfied with the PS VR2 headset, although of course I would also like to see more and better games. Who knows, I would be happy with Q Lite, if it ever comes out. For example, because my wife wants to watch TV, or because I really need to poop.