Sony’s $US200 PlayStation Portal is one step closer to being an actually fun device. Out of the box, the Portal can only stream games from a PS5, and users are barred from remotely accessing the company’s sizable cloud gaming library service. But now, thanks to two Google engineers, you may soon be able to hack the Portal to run games from a much more useful 20-year-old system: the cult favorite PlayStation Portable, better known as the PSP.
“After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal,” Andy Nguyen, a cloud vulnerability researcher at Google wrote on X/Twitter. “Yes, we hacked it.” PPSSPP is the name of a popular PSP emulator.
Nguyen, who said he broke open the device with fellow Google engineer Calle Svensson, posted a picture of a Portal running Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. According to the engineer, it’s a software-based hack, meaning it doesn’t require any soldering or other physical modifications.
It isn’t clear whether Nguyen and his co-hackers plan to publish instructions for the exploit. He said there’s “no release planned in the near future,” but that raises the chance that there may be one on the horizon. Regardless, the fact that the exploit is possible means independent hackers will double down on efforts to jailbreak the Portal. Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A jail-broken portal is an enticing prospect, particularly for people who already own one. The Portal is hobbled compared to competing handhelds including the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck, and the Lenovo Legion Go. Without the ability to run games on its own, the Portal is essentially a controller hooked up to a screen, not a fledged gaming device. You still might be better off with another option if you want anything other than a tablet that does remote streaming, but if you’ve got a Portal lying around, upcoming hacks could give it some real utility.