PS6 Sony Leak Will Have Significant Impact, Low Power Mode Preferred

The latest in a long line of PlayStation 6-related leaks sounds like great news for folks who loved the PlayStation Vita (and bad news for developers who don’t seem keen on doing a bunch of extra work).

The majority of the most recent PlayStation 6 leaks have stemmed from one single man lately, and said man is back with a brand new piece of juicy info– except, this time, he’s being backed up by an anonymous game developer.

In Moore’s Law is Dead’s latest video (thank you to The Game Post for the source), he revealed that an anonymous game dev contacted him with some insider info regarding Sony’s long-rumoured PlayStation 6 handheld.

As the source revealed, it seems that Sony is pushing for developers to design their games with the PlayStation 5’s newly introduced “Low Power” mode in mind.

While that might not sound too juicy at first, it would seem that Sony is asking devs to target the PS5’s Low Power mode specs with the PS6 handheld in mind, so that they’ll have an easier time porting PS5 games to the handheld down the line.

PSP and PlayStation Vita promo image, Sony

“This week we [Game Dev] received emails from Sony pushing Low-Power mode hard… almost like they need us to support it directly eventually”, Moore’s Law is Dead’s source revealed.

“We shouldn’t just lower framerates to fit LP Mode’s requirements, no, instead we should try to maintain 60 FPS by lowering resolutions. Razor CPU (This is a CPU Utility for PS5 Development) walkthroughs that aimed to help us find CPU bottlenecks so we can reduce CPU usage, and even look for ways to reduce how many threads are used by our game.”

“It is becoming glaringly obvious that Low-Power mode is a Trojan Horse for getting PS6 Handheld support ready before its launch, and they honestly seemed a bit annoyed at how few devs directly support it so far.”

Now I don’t consider myself to be the most tech-savvy gaming journalist by a long shot, but I do think it’s incredibly interesting that Sony is reportedly using the Low Power mode as a benchmark for a PS6 handheld.

If this is in fact true, having a handheld that could run PlayStation 5 games at launch would be huge for Sony.

Offering players a system that already has a dedicated library of previous-generation games would allow them to give both the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch 2 a run for their money, and would doubtlessly manage to convince those with a huge PlayStation library to grab one at launch.