PlayStation Portal has been hacked; can now run PSP emulator

Sony’s PlayStation Portal handheld is an interesting device which uses the company’s Remote Play service in order to stream titles from your home console to the portable peripheral. Despite being a streaming-only device, its Android-based software has now allowed for game emulators to be unofficially installed to the device – making it significantly more attractive of an offering.

Making the exciting announcement on Twitter, Andy Nguyen revealed that “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.”

For the uninitiated, PPSSPP is a PSP emulator which has been available on Android for years (though can also be downloaded on Windows, Linux, macOS and even iOS).

As mentioned, while the PlayStation Portal was designed and advertised exclusively for streaming games, its Android operating system and Qualcomm 662 SoC (system-on-chip) means that it could theoretically run a whole host of different emulators.

All that said, Nguyen notes that currently “there's no release planned in the near future, and there's much more work to be done”. Fortunately, the exploit used is all software-based, meaning eventually once the hack is released, it should be relatively easy for users to implement. Hopefully this is just the start of the Portal’s journey to emulation.

KitGuru says: What do you think of the PlayStation Portal as it currently is? Would you use it for emulation if you could? Should Sony add official emulation support? Let us know down below.

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