PS Plus Cloud Streaming Hits Steam Deck Without a PS5 — or Portal

Here’s the headline that makes the PS Portal feel redundant: PS Plus Premium cloud streaming now runs on Steam Deck without a PS5 in the chain, via a third-party app that’s handing out its premium tier for free during playtest. Asobi: Remote Play — no relation to the Team Asobi studio — just opened public testing on SteamOS and Linux, and for the first time Deck owners can pull titles like Astro Bot, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Ghost of Yōtei straight from Sony’s cloud catalogue.

Local streaming from a PS5 you own was never the problem; apps like Chiaki and Asobi’s own remote play have done that for years, long before Sony’s £220 Portal shipped. The new piece is cloud: an active PS Plus Premium subscription replaces the console entirely. Sony’s official answer to “PlayStation games without a PlayStation” costs £220. The Deck just got the same proposition for the cost of a subscription — and, right now, nothing at all.

60FPS, HDR, Haptics: What the Free Playtest Unlocks

Every premium feature is unlocked for the duration of the playtest: 60fps, HDR, controller haptics, 4K upscaling, and manual bitrate control — the same HDR remote play that’s now in a Deck OLED beta. When the full build hits Steam, the free tier drops to a 1080p/30fps ceiling and premium pricing remains unannounced — so this window is your chance to find out whether the delivered quality matches the spec sheet. On the Deck’s own 800p panel, the 1080p free ceiling is a non-issue; the 30fps cap, less so. And manual bitrate control is the sleeper feature for handheld use, letting you throttle the stream on a congested home network or push quality when you’re close to the router.

The other notable detail is that it all runs inside Steam’s Game Mode. No desktop-mode detours, no external launchers — Asobi launches like any other Steam title, which is exactly the frictionless baseline Deck streaming tools need to clear. You’ll still need a PSN account with active PS Plus Premium for the cloud half (the console-streaming half works without it), and Windows handhelds are out of luck for now: Ichenzo says a Windows build is coming “soonish,” leaving ROG Ally and Legion Go owners watching the Deck enjoy this first.

Sony’s £220 Portal Now Has a Steam Deck Problem

The Portal’s post-cloud-update pitch has been simple: PS5-calibre games on a dedicated handheld, no console required, for £220. Asobi walks into that pitch with a device that already plays your entire Steam library, an app that costs nothing during the playtest, and a premium price that hasn’t even been set yet. For anyone who treats their Steam Deck as the one handheld that plays everything, the Portal’s delta shrinks to a first-party screen and Sony’s polish — a hard sell once a stable third-party stream exists, and a reminder that dedicated cloud handhelds are already struggling.

The honest caveats: Asobi is unofficial, Ichenzo isn’t affiliated with Sony, and Sony has never owed third-party clients access to PSN cloud streaming — tolerance for Chiaki-style local play doesn’t guarantee the same for a cloud service that functionally competes with a Sony product. Streaming quality also hinges on your network far more than the Deck’s APU; battery life improves when the rendering happens in Sony’s datacenters, but only if your home connection is steady enough to enjoy the savings. If this playtest holds up, the open question flips from whether the Deck can do it to how long Sony lets it keep working.