Ever since we learned the first concrete details on Sony’s dedicated remote play device, the PlayStation Portal, including that the device runs on Android and has up to 6GB of internal storage, it’s been speculated that it could have hidden potential as an emulation machine. Now, that’s finally been put to the test.
A small crew of Google engineers have managed to hack Sony’s new streaming handheld and install PPSSPP, a popular PSP emulator that works on numerous platforms including Android-based devices. With this, PSP games have been able to run natively on the Portal’s own hardware without any kind of online connectivity or streaming.
One of the team behind the hack, Andy Nguyen, shared the news on social media and said that the hack was done without any kind of hardware tampering, but stressed that there are no plans to release it in the near future with plenty more work still to be done.
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
Of course, it’s not exactly a use case that Sony would want or support, but it does highlight the tragedy that we have a very decent portable PlayStation device on the market that’s technically capable of playing a huge back catalogue of classic PlayStation games, but likely never will in any official capacity.
Used as intended, the PlayStation Portal is still a cracking device. In my review, I said, “The PlayStation Portal gets a lot of things right. It’s got the proper DualSense controller experience, a big and vibrant screen, decent battery life and seamless PS5 connectivity over WiFi. All of that is enough to make it worth considering over other PS5 Remote Play solutions, but some missing features and the unpredictability of WiFi in general mean it’s not going to cut through to a wider audience.”
You can pick up a PlayStation Portal for yourself right here.
