SUMMARY
- PlayStation Portal is a handheld device that lets players stream and play their PS5 titles.
- Fans wished for the PlayStation Portal to do a lot more like run its own games.
Sony launched its handheld remote device, the PlayStation Portal, in November 2023. And it has turned out to be a bit of a stunner hit for Sony. The portable device often runs out of stock and is a tough one to get one’s hands on.
Talking about what it does, PlayStation Portal merely allows players to stream games from their PlayStation 5. That’s all that this $199.99 device does. It cannot run games locally either.
PSP titles on PlayStation Portal
However, in the gaming world, wherever there is a problem or void, mods always have a way out. And that’s exactly what two Google engineers have done. The two claim to have hacked the PlayStation Portal to get PlayStation Portable (PSP) games to run on the new device.
After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it. With help from xyz and @ZetaTwo pic.twitter.com/AXuRROo6Ip
— Andy Nguyen (@theflow0) February 19, 2024
They even shared a photo showcasing Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories running smoothly on the system. One of the engineers was Andy Nguyen, a cloud vulnerability researcher at Google. Interestingly, Andy has worked with fellow Google security engineer Calle Svensson on the PlayStation Portal project.
Also known as TheFlow, the engineer has uncovered multiple PS4 and PS5 exploits in the past. In fact, he is even due to detail a new PS4 exploit in May. This proves that users like the PlayStation Portal, however, they wish to do more than just stream PS5 games on the device.
Currently, PlayStation Portable is not even able to stream games from Sony’s cloud gaming service. Possibly this could make Sony realize that what fans want is not just another handheld, but a true successor to its PlayStation Portable and the Vita.
How are PSP games playable on the PlayStation Portal?
The two engineers claim to have used PPSSPP, a PlayStation Portable emulator, to work natively on the Portal. PPSSPP is a free, open-source PlayStation Portable emulator for several devices, be it mobile phones or PC hardware or even the Nintendo Wii U and Xbox Series X/S.
The emulator software allows players to play a variety of games in full HD resolution paired with upscaled textures and post-processing shaders that restore these good old features in games. It’s unclear whether Andy will describe to the world how to get PPSSPP working or release a jailbreak so that other enthusiasts too can install the emulator on the Portal.
/sdcard is ~6gb
— Andy Nguyen (@theflow0) February 19, 2024
He says, “There’s no release planned in the near future, and there’s much more work to be done.” However, he did hint at posting some videos this weekend to display the emulator in action.
While answering some questions on X, he mentioned that it needs about 6 GB of internal storage and is “all software-based.” This means that no hardware modifications were needed to make the emulator run. Furthermore, he says that the project took “more than a month of hard work” to see through.
Calle Svensson confirmed to Kotaku that games such as Minecraft and Tekken 6 were tested on the hacked PS Portal. He shared that both games “work 100%” and that PPSSPP “plays very smooth” given the 2x resolution and 100 percent speed.