Sony Interactive Entertainment will release a new handheld, the PlayStation Portal Player Midnight Black (Japanese-language only), in Japan on Thursday 10 December, with internal storage added for functions the company has not described, according to a post on its Japanese PlayStation.Blog. The model is limited to use in Japan.

The system language is Japanese only, and the handheld works only with PlayStation accounts whose country/region setting is Japan. The recommended retail price is 39,980 yen including tax, and pre-orders open at 10:00 Japan time on Friday 13 November at PlayStation retailers and e-commerce sites across Japan. The announcement covers Japan.

What Sony has said about the internal storage

“With an eye towards future functionality, the new model comes with the brand new addition of internal storage,” the blog post says, in an English translation of the Japanese text carried by IGN.

Sony has not said what the storage will be used for, and the post gives no capacity. “We will provide further details regarding these future features as they are finalized,” the post says, again in IGN’s translation.

Renamed from Remote Player to Player

The PlayStation Portal went on sale in 2023 as a remote play device, connecting over Wi-Fi to a PS5 at home so that games installed on the console could be played away from the television. Cloud streaming was added in 2025, letting the Portal on its own stream supported PS5 games directly from the cloud through PlayStation Plus Premium.

Sony said the new model reflects that spread of uses beyond remote play, and that the product name has been changed from “PlayStation Portal Remote Player” to “PlayStation Portal Player”. In the announcement, Sony said the Portal now allows “even players who don’t have a PS5” to play PS5 games, in IGN’s translation of the Japanese post.

The hardware described in the post keeps the 8-inch LCD running at 1080p and 60fps, along with 3D Audio and the main features of the DualSense wireless controller, including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

What is included, and what the device needs

A one-month PlayStation Plus Premium entitlement is included with the new model as a bonus. Cloud streaming requires a subscription to PlayStation Plus Premium, which Sony describes as giving access to hundreds of eligible PS5 games. Sony said redeeming the entitlement lets buyers stream supported PS5 games from the cloud straight after purchase.

Games covered include titles in the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Classics Catalog, among them Final Fantasy XVI and Rise of the Ronin, which Sony said can be streamed over Wi-Fi at no extra cost with the included entitlement. Sony said several thousand PS5 titles already support cloud streaming.

Owners of a PS5 can also connect the handheld to their console over Wi-Fi and play through remote play. Remote play requires a PS5 console and a PlayStation account. For the Portal Player itself, Sony lists a broadband Wi-Fi connection of at least 5Mbps, with 15Mbps recommended, and a PlayStation account registered to Japan.

IGN reported that the new model is priced the same as the current PS Portal in Japan, at 39,980 yen, and that it is Japanese language only and requires a Japanese PSN account.