Fresh leaks surrounding Sony’s much-anticipated return to the handheld gaming market are painting an encouraging picture for the device currently known as “Project Canis.” According to known AMD leaker KeplerL2, posting on the NeoGAF forums, the PS6 Handheld is expected to outperform the Xbox Series S in both rasterization and ray tracing, a claim that has drawn significant attention from the gaming community given that the Xbox Series S served as the performance baseline for the current console generation before the Nintendo Switch 2 entered the market last year.
The leaked specifications attributed to Project Canis include four Zen 6c cores, two Zen 6 LP cores, 16 RDNA 5 compute units, 192-bit LPDDR5X memory totaling 24GB, and a 135mm die built on TSMC’s 3nm process. KeplerL2 noted that the GPU is ahead of the Xbox Series S in raster performance and described it as massively ahead in ray tracing and path tracing, suggesting that Sony’s handheld could offer a portable gaming experience that meaningfully eclipses what Microsoft’s entry-level home console was capable of delivering. If accurate, this would position the PS6 Handheld as a genuinely capable device rather than a compromise-heavy portable, which has historically been the trade-off associated with handheld gaming hardware.
Beyond raw performance, the leaker also addressed image quality, specifically the role that Sony’s next-generation AI upscaling technology, PSSR 3, is expected to play in the overall experience. KeplerL2 stated that PSSR 3 combined with AMD’s FSR 5 would deliver superior image quality compared to even NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, and noted that the Nintendo Switch 2 currently relies on an older DLSS 2 CNN implementation, with some titles using an even more stripped-down variant. This would place the PS6 Handheld above the Switch 2 not only in hardware specifications but also in the quality of its upscaling output, a factor that has become increasingly central to how modern games are rendered and presented on screen, particularly on portable devices where native resolution rendering at high frame rates remains a challenge.
The broader context surrounding the PS6 Handheld’s potential pricing also adds weight to its strategic significance for Sony. With next-generation home consoles like the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix widely expected to carry steep price tags due to rising component costs, industry analyst Michael Pachter has suggested game streaming could become the only viable route for many consumers. Against that backdrop, a handheld priced at around $399 could prove more appealing than a home console pushing $699 or beyond, a sentiment echoed by Alderon Games’ Matthew Cassells, who argued that a more accessible entry point would make the upgrade decision considerably easier for a large portion of the gaming audience.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
