The PlayStation Portal is a few months old now, and it was long debated whether it could run games locally, and it seems that we now have our answer.
Two Google engineers have managed to get the PPSSPP PSP emulator running natively on the PlayStation Portal without any Wi-Fi streaming required. “After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it,” said Andy Nguyen on Twitter.
This discovery was made by Nguyen, a Google Cloud vulnerability researcher alongside Google security engineer Calle Svensson, who have made several discoveries in the PS4/PS5 hacking scene in the past.
There's no release planned in the near future, and there's much more work to be done
— Andy Nguyen (@theflow0) February 19, 2024
Nguyen goes on to confirm that this is all software based meaning that nothing needs to be modified at a hardware level. At the time of writing, Nguyen says that there are no plans to release the hack in the near future and there’s a lot more work to be done.
Obviously though, this is confirmation that the device does have the ability to run games locally, which means emulation and even Android gaming might be possible in the future. It’s unclear if Sony ever plans to unlock these features, but it’ll be an interesting space to watch.
In our PlayStation Portal review, we said: “The PlayStation Portal provides the best remote play experience by far with its fantastic ergonomics and an almost carbon copy of DualSense functionality. Whilst it’s not the PlayStation portable that many were hoping for, it’s a fantastic way to experience PS5 games away from your PS5 over the internet.”
