Sony's PlayStation Portal can't run games on its own, but a hack could turn it into more than just a fancy tablet. Sony's $200 PlayStation Portal is one step closer to becoming a truly fun device. The out-of-the-box portal can only stream games from PS5, and users are prohibited from remotely accessing the company's vast cloud game library service. But now, thanks to two Google engineers, you might soon be hacked into Portal and running a game from a 20-year-old system: the popular PlayStation Portable, or PSP.
After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP now runs natively on PlayStation Portal," Google's cloud vulnerability researcher Andy Nguyen wrote on Twitter. "Yes, we hacked it. "PPSSPP is the name of a popular PSP emulator. Nguyen said he worked with Google engineer Calle Svensson to hack the device and released a copy of the portal running Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. According to the engineer, this was a software-based hack that meant that no soldering or other physical modifications were required.
It is unclear whether Nguyen and his collaborators plan to publish instructions for the exploit. He said that "there are no plans for a release in the near future", but this increases the chances that there may be a release in the future. In any case, the possibility of this vulnerability means that independent hackers will double their efforts to crack the portal.
A cracked portal is an enticing prospect, especially for someone who already owns one. Compared to competing handhelds, including Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and Lenovo Legion Go, Portal's capabilities are limited. Without the ability to run the game on its own, the Portal is essentially a controller connected to a screen, rather than a full-fledged gaming device. If you want more than just a tablet capable of remote streaming, you might still be better off with another option, but if you have a portal on hand, the upcoming hack might give it some real utility.