The PS6 handheld is rumored to be Sony’s re-entry into the handheld market in terms of a handheld that can play games locally on the device, and it’s reportedly coming with ray tracing support and powerful rasterization that will help games look visually stunning. It’s also now being rumored that the ray tracing and rasterization will be more powerful than on the Xbox Series S. While the Xbox Series S is the less powerful of Microsoft’s current-gen console models, games still look pretty good on it.
The fact that Sony’s upcoming handheld will be able to exceed the Series S capabilities should be an exciting prospect for most gamers who like their PlayStation products. Not only because it means Sony will be back to having a handheld that doesn’t rely on game streaming, but also because it will likely come with a lower cost than the PS6 itself.
Sony’s PS6 release plan is still rumored to be sometime during the 2027 holiday season. It’s also highly likely that the RAM and storage shortage will still be ongoing at this point. Even if it were to end at the same time as release, Sony will have had to procure components for the launch batch well before this, and that probably means high manufacturing costs. Ultimately, gamers could be looking at a pretty expensive console next-gen. The handheld however, should cost less. Probably considerably less, which makes for an easier entry point for consumers in the next generation of PlayStation hardware.
The PS6 handheld is massively ahead of Xbox Series S in ray tracing and path tracing
It’s worth keeping in mind that these are just rumors, but the rumors come from KeplerL2 on the Neogaf forums, so that’s worth considering as well. KeplerL2 has leaked credible console details before, which makes it more likely that this information is accurate.
According to the rumor, the PS6 handheld will be massively ahead in ray tracing and path tracing than the Xbox Series S, while the GPU will be a “bit ahead in raster.”
The PS6 handheld will deliver more power than the Xbox Series S
