I, along with the three other people that bought Nintendo’s infamous Wii U console got a blast from the past this week as Sony had an unexpected surprise during its May 2023 PlayStation Showcase event, the reveal of ‘Project Q’ for the PS5.
This is a an upcoming peripheral for the PS5 that will allow its users to stream their games to the device’s screen, and game ‘on-the-go’ by making use of the DualSense-like controller modules that are moulded to the left and right of the main unit. This isn’t the first time that Sony has shamelessly spun-off one of Nintendo’s concepts, but this is definitely one that doesn’t quite add up.
Wii U 2, for who?
I remember when I first laid eyes on the Wii U when it was revealed back at E3 2011.
My young, 14 year-old brain was bamboozled with the ominous slate that was the Wii U Gamepad, the star of Nintendo’s entire reveal. Every time I think back to this moment, I wonder what exactly was so ‘confusing’ about the reveal. Even at that age, I understood the company’s pitch of this being a new console, with a new style of controller. But, alas, I had already become a full-on dedicated videogame nerd at that point, so the lens I was seeing it through was far more wider than the general public.
If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the years since, its that sometimes people really do need a concept spelt out in the simplest way possible. On that note, it’s this very point that is the main issue I have with Sony’s Project Q.
When Nintendo tried to communicate what made the Wii U special, the messaging centred around the ‘unique’ features offered by the Gamepad acting as a secondary display.
As mentioned earlier, it was the centre of the console’s reveal and remained as the primary focus of all of the system’s advertising throughout its life. This confused the public, leading many to believe that it was yet another accessory for the original Wii, which there were already an abundance of at that point. Seeing that most of the Wii’s user base had lost interest in the console by the time the Wii U came around, all of these factors are pointed to as key reasons why the concept of the Wii U never really stuck.
Nevertheless, one feature that Nintendo leaned in on was the ability to use the Gamepad as the primary display to allow users to continue playing, even when the TV was in use. Having made use of it quite regularly myself, it certainly did serve a good purpose. However, as was a theme with the rest of the system, there was one major drawback. The Gamepad needed to maintain a stable connection with the main console at all times. In reality, this meant making the connection as unobstructed as possible. Yet, it wouldn’t take much for the Wii U Gamepad’s signal to struggle after moving just a few feet away, especially if there were obstacles.
So, the Gamepad-only mode was useful only in situations where you were just within sight of the main console. Not ideal if you wanted to play with it in another room, or an entirely different floor away from the main console.
All of this was due to the fact that the Wii U itself beamed a dedicated signal to the Gamepad by means of a local Wi-Fi network. This could not be enhanced or altered in any way by the end-user. These limitations ultimately made Gamepad-only mode a neat party trick at best and an inconvenient fall back at worst. If you had a setup that allowed it to work as intended, it was fine, but when compared to the truly dynamic nature of something like the Switch, it’s easy to see why Nintendo knew it had to move on from this design choice.
And yet, here’s Sony falling back.
Deja-Q, deja-U
As mentioned in the onset of this piece, Project Q for the PS5 will function in much of the same way that the Gamepad did, albeit its dedicated entirely to the feature of streaming games away from the TV. It’s funny how in the reveal trailer for Project Q, Jim Ryan outright says that “At PlayStation, innovation is our passion.” I mean, given the very direct comparisons present here, this is basically a real life manifestation of the ‘Graphic design is my passion’ meme—irony and all, in tow.
Dunking aside, the key takeaways from the rest of the announcements are that its explicitly mentioned how Project Q will stream games “over Wi-Fi” and the footnote in the video mentions that said games will first need to be installed on the PS5 console. So, the PS5 will perform all of the processing and beam the signal to the Project Q handheld via a Wi-Fi connection. Again, all similar to the tech behind the Wii U and Wii U Gamepad, albeit the Wi-Fi process is very much likely to be more traditional. That is, rather than a locked, dedicated console-to-controller beam, it will be via a regular Wi-Fi network.
While this should eliminate the limitations that was seen with the Wii U and the Wii U Gamepad, Project Q will still be limited by the fact that it will have to rely on a good, fast Wi-Fi connection in order to ensure stable playback. We’ve all experienced watching a video on a bad Wi-Fi network before; perhaps you even live somewhere with notoriously bad Wi-Fi. Trying to stream a game on such a network will be even more frustrating.
Thus, this forthcoming functionality between the PS5 and Project Q falls into the same category as the Wii U and Wii U Gamepad: a neat party trick at best, and an inconvenient fall back at worst.
Charged for being none-the-wiser
The real bummer here, however, is the fact that these limitations will not be highlighted to the average Joe. As I mentioned earlier in the article, the Wii U Gamepad was confusing to the general public and was often misunderstood.
Remember what I said earlier about some folks needing the description of an item to be spelled out as clearly as possible? I really want to see how Sony intends to get this message across to would-be buyers of Project Q that this device is not handheld in the same vein as the PS Vita and explicitly requires the use of a PS5 and a stable Internet connection to actually work properly.
But, let’s assume for a second that Sony’s marketing is on point and all of these footnotes carry over as clear as glass. There’s still an elephant in the room – what’s the justification of buying this over just simply streaming your PS5 games to a device that you already own?
As evidenced by existing services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now and even Sony’s very own PS Remote Play, it is already quite a well-known thing to pair a controller to a device like a tablet, phone, or PC and stream the games that you’d like to play. Project Q renders the same result, just with the added necessity of already owning a PS5 and the games you want to play. In a way, it’s even less convenient than a cloud service which already comes with the same limitation of needing a good, stable Internet connection.
For the consumers who don’t know all of these finer details, they’re essentially going to be charged for their ignorance. Project Q isn’t a solution, it’s an expense. Even if Sony only charges $100 for it (which it should hopefully be no more than,) that’s still an expense that could be avoided altogether by making use of a device that the customer already likely has. Sure, gaming is an expensive hobby, but there are budget-conscious players out there. Any money saved can go into better investments such as a more useful peripheral, or even better, another game.
Altogether, Project Q feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t even exist and an answer to demands that weren’t even being uttered. There have been calls from some handheld fans for a new age portable PlayStation to come about. However, this doesn’t at all match those requests as it’s essentially tethered to the PS5 in all but a physical cable.
Going back to the Wii U one last time, as flawed as it may have been, there were at least a handful of titles that justified its unique design. The games that did make proper use of the dual-screen functionality were made better for it, even though it only really worked in very specific cases and that was its biggest downfall. Project Q, by contrast, is an extra accessory; either you buy one, or you don’t. But, quite frankly, you really shouldn’t.
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