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Sony, in partnership with Honda, has unveiled a prototype that lets you stream PS5 games from the passenger seat of an electric car. Oddly enough, unless Sony announces something before the Honda Afeela goes on sale, that means you’ll be able to stream PS5 games on a car before any other device outside of the PlayStation ecosystem.
After months of speculation, Sony and Honda announced to CES 2023 they aim to launch the Afeela smart car in 2026. Unfortunately, this means we won’t see a truly mobile car PS5 games for a while – yes, I consider the Afeela to be the spiritual successor to the PS Vita.
Instead of including a local PS5 gaming hardware in the Afeela, games are streamed to the passengers’ screens. That does mean you can’t use discs to play games in areas with poor internet service, and you’re better off saving up before entering a tunnel.
It’s not just the inside of the Afeela that can stream content, as revealed during Sony’s CES 2023 press conference that there is also a ‘media bar’ screen on the outside of the vehicle. Apparently that could be information such as weather and car battery level, as well as advertisements. This was demonstrated with an advertisement for Spider-Man: No Way Home on the roof of the vehicle. Whether you’ll be able to project the gameplay onto the screen on the go remains to be seen.
Sony Honda Mobility CEO Yasuhide Mizuno stated that pre-orders will begin in the first half of 2025 and the first sales are expected to go live by the end of the year. Given that this Sony CarStation will probably last another three years if it ever goes into production, the point remains as to why we’re seeing cloud streaming in a motor vehicle before a gaming TV. Especially considering that TVs are something Sony already has a significant stake in.
When will we see PlayStation streaming on TV?
While the revised PSPlus Premium subscription effectively rolled into the PS Now streaming options in its service, there are still no options to stream directly to a smart TV. To use PS Now you need a PS4 or PS5 connected to the screen. And to use Remote Play, you need to stream gameplay from the console to a nearby computer or phone screen. Sony has been making some leading TV sets through its Bravia line for decades, and yet it hasn’t announced any plans for a dedicated cloud gaming app.
The closest we’ve come so far was the PS TV, a micro-console that repurposed the ill-fated PS Vita as a set-top box nearly 10 years ago. Considering that the technology exists to be able to stream PS5 and PS4 games already without burdening physical hardware, this development would make gaming on the platform much more accessible for those struggling to find PS5 stock still.
We know it’s not impossible to stream games to the TV as Sony’s competitors offer this feature. Last year, Nvidia revealed that it GeForce now platform, which uses some of the best graphics cards to stream more than 1,500 games, came to Samsung’s 4K smart TVs.
Last year we saw Microsoft teaming up with Samsung stream Xbox game pass games to Samsung TVs with the Samsung Gaming Hub. Microsoft has made every effort to get its catalog on as many screens as possible with its Xbox Cloud gaming tech, so it’s odd to see Sony fall so far behind when it already has key parts of the ecosystem under control. It has the PS Plus catalog, PS Now streaming tech and its own family of TVs, it seems it’s missing an open target.
Although this announcement of streaming games to the Afeela might be a hint of what we could see coming to other screens between now and the car’s launch in 2026.