Would you buy a PS4 Portable ?

[Bofferbrauer2]

Geralt99 said:

I have been thinking about this for a while now.

A PS4 handheld (PS4 GO?) with similar specs to a standard PS4 that plays games at 720p priced at $299.

It does everything a normal PS4 does only at lower resolution.

I believe it could be a strong contender for the switch, especially in Japan. 

If you already own a PS4, would you get the PS4 GO?

The PS4 has about 1.8 TFlops. The only commercial APUs that came out with that sort of power are the top of the line AMD APUs from last and this year. Those are specced at 35W, however, they can't hold their turbo for that performance. Still, might be enough for the proposed 720p.

But 35W is way too much for a handheld. You can cut a bit by replacing the CPU with a Jaguar like in the PS4, but even then, the graphical prowess needs more power than can adequately be provided by a handheld device.

Let's look forther than the Vegas in the current APUs and what Navi brought us. With these chips and a jaguar CPU I believe it might be possible to bring the consumption down to about 15-20W just for a chip with similar performance. That's fine in a laptop, even for an ultrathin, but still too much for any handheld.

Long story short, a PS4 Go like you.re proposing would only get really technically viable by the time the Switch is way past it's prime already. It might be more interesting to have such a powerful handheld by the time it's successor comes out, as before that, it's just too powerful, and thus power-hungry, to be viable in a handheld format.