What is Sony’s Project Q PS5 streaming handheld actually for?

It’s always nice to spice up a summer console showcase with a little hardware reveal, but Sony’s unveiling of its Project Q handheld at the PlayStation Showcase on Wednesday was one of the more head-scratching ones.

Project Q is a device with an 8-inch screen that lets you play PlayStation 5 games using Sony’s Remote Play system, streaming them from your PS5 over Wi-Fi “when you’re away from your TV,” in the words of the press release. It looks like a DualSense controller chopped in half and attached to either end of a Switch’s midsection.

Here’s what it’s not: a true handheld console, or a cloud gaming device. The games are run locally on your PS5, and with no cellular connection, Project Q won’t work on the move, unless the plane or train you’re on happens to have an extremely robust Wi-Fi connection or you invest in a 5G hub on a good network. (Sony says Project Q requires “at least 5 Mbps” to use, with “a better play experience” needing at least 15 Mbps.) The games must be installed on the PS5, too, which rules out using Project Q with the cloud gaming service that’s part of Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription offering.

Really, Project Q is about giving you access to your PS5 games around the house — when the TV’s in use or when you’re in bed. This could be useful when visiting family or staying in an Airbnb.

This is what Remote Play does — and has been doing for a very long time, actually. This feature was first introduced with PlayStation 3 in 2006. It initially worked only with the PlayStation Portable, and then the Vita portable. Support was eventually extended to include other Sony products, Windows PCs and Macs and, finally, Android and iOS devices in 2019. It’s not too difficult to set up on a laptop, phone, or iPad paired with a PlayStation controller, and it can come in very handy. However, it is not widely known.

The question is: what does Project Q offer? Why is Sony still investing in Remote play with a dedicated hardware device after 17 years?

A dedicated handheld device makes sense: It is easier to use than separate controls and a small display. Project Q is a device that offers comfort and ease of use. As a one-time official PlayStation product, Project Q should be more seamless than other Remote Play options. You can get Remote Play to work with a Steam Deck but it requires a lot of fiddling. This controller offers DualSense’s adaptive triggers as well as fine haptic input. The screen’s 1080p resolution will certainly be good enough for its size, although an OLED panel like the top-of-the-line Switch would have been nice, rather than the LCD that Sony is offering.

Project Q is presumably designed to be the ultimate, easy-to use Remote Play system for the entire home. But what it won’t do is offer any more than that, and it is duplicating work other devices you already own can do. There’s even an officially licensed PlayStation version of the Backbone game controller for mobile, and an Android version of it was announced the day before Project Q was. The Backbone controller may not feature DualSense but it could make Remote Play portable.

The most shocking thing about Project Q may be that Sony has not extended its capabilities to stream games from the cloud so it can work independent of a PS5. Cloud streaming doesn’t require a huge amount of processing power — just connectivity and a video decoder which, in theory, Project Q must already have. Perhaps Sony couldn’t get it working well enough at cost — but then again, perhaps investing a little extra and risking a higher price point might have been worth it to increase the utility of the device, and to future-proof it.

The existence of Project Q suggests that Sony is aware that there’s a demand for gaming to fit more adaptably into people’s lives; to be more flexible, and less tied to a big electronic brick under the desk or TV. The enormous success of Nintendo’s Switch proves that, and Microsoft and others are betting that this desire means gaming will eventually follow other entertainment media into the cloud streaming realm.

Sony is a pioneer in the cloud gaming industry. In 2012, Sony bought the Gaikai Platform for $380 Million to create the PlayStation Now Service. However, it never knew what to do. The fact is that the cloud does not fit comfortably with Sony’s business model, culture, or values. Sony, the entertainment giant founded on an old consumer electronics company, is a place where many people are engineers with specialized skills in building gadgets and marketers who can put them into boxes and sell them.

The engineers now have a new gadget and the marketers a box. But the box doesn’t have much in it. Project Q has some merit as a means to increase the accessibility and marketing of Remote Play. But as a response to the rapidly shifting future of gaming, it’s more than a little backward.