My gaming habits have changed over time, especially ever since my Steam Deck arrived in early 2022. Now that the PlayStation Portal (henceforth “PSP”, even though there already is a “PSP”; but I don’t want to spell it out every single time) can stream a subset of games from the PlayStation Plus (PS+) Premium catalogue, I’ve picked it up, too. And it pushed me farther down the road towards preferring dedicated, portable gaming devices over stationary ones like a PC or a PlayStation 5. This month alone, I clocked in 80 or so hours for The Legend of Dragoon, another 8 or so hours for Coffee Talk, and now I’m chipping away at Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly.

When Valve announced the Steam Deck in 2021, I signed up for the smallest version right away. I didn’t really have any high expectations for the Steam Deck, since I had just put together a new gaming PC. It wasn’t a high-end gaming PC – do you remember GPU prices around that time? –, but still a lot more capable than what the Steam Deck could be. The Steam Deck surely would just be a gaming device for travels…

The conveniences of playing whenever, wherever

It turned out that one major appeal of being able to play wherever was actually not “wherever on the go”; it was literally wherever, which includes “wherever at home”. Not being bound to a certain room – or even area – felt liberating and was the real game changer for me. The Steam Deck would allow me to squeeze in gaming time when I wouldn’t have thought of actively moving to the living room for the PS5 or to my desk for the PC.

However, the ability to play games whenever was almost as much of a game changer. Suspending a game at any time and then resuming it in the exact same spot later is something I took for granted with my Nintendo Switch, and only learned to really appreciate it with my Steam Deck. It nailed that process for practically every game I’ve played on the Steam Deck. Sure, continuous saving lets me do something similar on the PS5, but it’s not the same: I can’t just turn off the console and resume the game exactly where I left off by only pressing the power button. I will have to navigate through the PS5 UI to start the game, only to be left off at the last save point, which isn’t necessarily where I left; it’s just not too far away from when I left.

The Steam Deck has given me both spatial flexibility and temporal flexibility, which ultimately led to me spending more time on games than I’ve done since… 2016? I mean, I finally talked myself into playing Stardew Valley and spent some unholy number of hours (triple-digits, at least) there. Which, to be fair, is a laughable amount when compared with some other people’s Stardew Valley play times, my wife’s included…

The conveniences of streaming games…

But there’s one downside to the Steam Deck, especially the first one: Its fans are really loud and annoying in more demanding games, which is especially bothersome when I’m in a quiet environment to begin with. I heard it’s a lot better with the Steam Deck OLED, but I don’t know if I want to drop that much money for a bunch of marginal upgrades. Even though it’s admittedly a pretty large bunch.

One solution is to just move the source of all that generated heat somewhere else and then stream the game to the Steam Deck. chiaki-ng does a great job for streaming games from my PS5 to my Steam Deck. Needless to say, I’ve also played more PS5 games since then, because I don’t have to feel guilty for calling dibs on the TV, at all. My wife can play whatever she wants to on the TV while I’m sitting there – or anywhere – with my Steam Deck.

But what if she wants to play something on the PS5, too? Getting another PS5 plus another TV sounds like a really costly solution to that problem; but what if the second PS5 only costs 199 EUR, is a (somewhat) portable device with its own screen, and thus doesn’t need another TV?

Streaming games from the PS5 to the PSP works fine, but that’s not my real use case for it, especially given that I could already do that with my Steam Deck. It’s rather streaming games from The Cloud™ to the PSP. Which has worked a lot better than I thought it would.

…and its downsides

But it’s far from perfect. Maybe it also didn’t help that the first game I played on the PSP was The Legend of Dragoon, which has a combat system that requires good timing for unleashing stronger attacks. But the latency itself and its variability are really noticeable in that game. My brain adjusted to the base latency, but there’s no way for it to predict latency spikes, of course.

They haven’t been dealbreakers for me in the games I’ve played so far. To be fair, it’s not like I’d pay much attention to latency spikes in Coffee Talk or its sequel, anyway. But I’ll have to see how bad they are in more action-oriented games like Final Fantasy VII Remake (yep, still haven’t played that one…) or Final Fantasy XVI.

The PSP also is utterly useless on the go without a reliable internet connection, of course, which is why I haven’t brought it on any trip yet. (Have you tried using the free Wi-Fi at a Premier Inn hotel, especially one in Central London?) Weight and space considerations would make me choose one or the other, and I don’t think it’s close, at all. The Steam Deck is a true portable console that can play games wherever, whenever. The PSP fails to deliver on the “whenever” part and is a pretty paperweight without a good, reliable internet connection.

Then, there’s the financial aspect of PS+ Premium. Here in Germany, PS+ Essential currently is 71.99 EUR, and PS+ Premium is 151.99 EUR. Disregarding the question of “Who gets how much money when I stream a game instead of buying it?”, 80 EUR for game streaming is… not nothing. But so far at least, I’m on track to getting good value out of those 80 EUR. There’s quite a bit more in the catalogue that I’d love to play again sooner than later (hi2u, Grandia!), thanks to nostalgia.

Good thing May has its fair share of public holidays. I probably won’t spend all of them gaming, but I’m sure I will on some of them. Nostalgia is a really strong force…