How Google engineers 'hacked' Sony PlayStation Portal to run Minecraft and other old games

Launched in November 2023, the PlayStation Portal was Sony's answer to remote PS5 gaming. This nifty device streams games from your PS5 console to its built-in screen, letting you play on the go. But, hold onto your controllers! Google engineers have pulled off a surprising feat - they've apparently hacked the Portal to run games directly on its own hardware, bypassing the need for remote streaming altogether.This opens up interesting possibilities for the future of the Portal, potentially turning it into a standalone gaming device.
Two Google engineers managed to get the PPSSPP emulator running natively on the PlayStation Portal. PPSSPP is a free and open-source PSP emulator for a number of OS, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo WiiU, Nintendo Switch, with a focus on speed and portability.
“After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it,” Andy Nguyen said in a post on X, adding that the exploit is “all software based”, which means that the hacking doesn’t require any hardware modifications like additional chips or soldering.

Engineers played Grand Theft Auto PSP
The emulator allowed the engineers to run a Grand Theft Auto PSP version on the PlayStation Portal without being connected to Wi-Fi. They also played Minecraft.
According to the photo shared by the engineers, they played Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on the PlayStation Portal. Nguyen, who is a cloud vulnerability researcher at Google, said that they may release some videos to demonstrate the exploit at the weekend.
Nguyen, who was accompanied by fellow Google security engineer Calle Svensson, has reportedly discovered multiple PS4 and PS5 exploits in the past, as per a report by The Verge. He will be providing details on a new PS4 exploit in May.
"PlayStation Portal is the perfect device for gamers in households where they might need to share their living room TV or simply want to play PS5 games in another room of the house. PlayStation Portal will connect remotely to your PS5 over Wi-Fi, so you’ll be able to swiftly jump from playing on your PS5 to your PlayStation Portal," the company said at the announcement.
Gamers can play supported games on PlayStation Portal that are installed on gamers' PS5 consoles and use the Dualsense controller.