A group of Google engineers have hacked Sony’s PlayStation Portal handheld to run a PlayStation Portable (PSP) emulator so they can play games like Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, to name a few.
Google Senior Information Security Engineer Andy Nguyen posted a photo of the PlayStation Portal running GTA: Liberty City Stories, which was released in 2005 as a PSP exclusive. The engineer tinkered with the device as a matter of personal interest unaffiliated with his work at the tech giant, Nguyen tells PCMag.
“I wanted to hack it as I grew up with the PlayStation Portable and it’s how I got into security and hacking in the first place,” he says in a message. “I was disappointed that Sony didn’t make a real handheld and compete with Steam Deck/Nintendo Switch, hence I was very motivated to make this device a real handheld.”
Nguyen managed to get into the PlayStation Portal’s software to run the PSP emulator, PPSSPP, which is known to work on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and a handful of other gaming devices. Minecraft, as well as any Android Package Kit (APK) file type, should be able to run on his hacked version of the Portal, Nguyen says.
“After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it,” Nguyen wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.
Nguyen credits fellow Google engineer Calle Svenson as well as a pseudonymous individual known as “xyz” for also helping crack the Portal’s code.
“There’s no release planned in the near future, and there’s much more work to be done,” Nguyen adds, so don’t expect to be able to play Liberty City on your new device anytime soon.
Nguyen tells PCMag that work on cracking the Portal began Jan. 1. Last year, Nguyen reportedly found another PlayStation exploit that resulted in a $10,000 bug bounty.
The PS Portal isn’t the only PlayStation device that can be effectively “jailbroken,” however. There are plenty of reports of users hacking their way into the PS4 and PS5, effectively unlocking new potential for the Sony gaming consoles.
