
In February, we brought you word of a group of Google engineers who, apparently just for fun, managed to hack Sony's streaming PS Portal to run emulated PSP games offline. Being courageous White Hat types, the group "responsibly reported" the issues to Sony. The exploit was quietly fixed in patch 2.0.6, which also seems to have improved video quality significantly, despite neither being listed in the patch notes.
The group's spokesperson appears to be Andy Nguyen, who yesterday took to Twitter to announce that Sony had addressed the bugs that made the hack possible. As you might imagine, the announcement was met with criticism from members of the emulation community, who took umbrage with Nguyen's Lawful Good actions and strict adherence to a code of hacking ethics.
What do you think of the exposure and subsequent closure of PSP emulation on the PS Portal? Was it always going to be circumvented, like Nguyen suggests? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 24
I'm just confused it was possible in the first place, I assumed streaming devices were incapable of running anything natively. It's got enough memory to install stuff?
These are professional Google devs, and everyone knows that. They did what is usual in the professional space, and Sony would have fixed the bugs nevertheless. So I don’t see a big problem here.
Wait The Flow is a current google engineer or he's just talking on behalf of the engineers? I would find it strange that him of all people would help out Sony patch up anything PlayStation related.
@Balosi The portal still have to have a SOC to handle WiFi/bluetooth, Decoding of the stream... etc. Storage for the OS for setup... etc
We're also talking about the PSP... It doesn't take much to run a PSP emu. My old iPhone 4s did that just fine.
If memory serves,it's not much different to hackers/modders whom in the past found exploits with the PS4's PS2 emulator as a jailbreak back-door,(& found in theory its so-so emulation could run far more games than were ever officially released on PSN),have done much the same thing in reporting the exploits before they release any uses of it themselves.
Likewise whether Sony or other corporations think there's even rewards in place depending on the severity of exploits reported.
Rule of thumb for those that can afford to mod their consoles or devices is never to update to latest firmware if they want to run their retro libraries anyway!
If it happened once it can happen again. Might be worth picking up a portal down the line to see what else the thing is capable of...
Does Sony offer a bounty for reporting exploits like Nintendo does?
The fl0w is a cool dude. Even if he works at Google.
The internet taking umbridge with legal behaviour? Surely that cannot be.
Fine by me. I don't understand why people get upset over this... not every piece of hardware has to emulate something that came before it, there are plenty of other devices which already do.
Bad manager consider it as bug. Good manager consider it as feature, release paid emulator and resell PSP games, but that is just thinking of poor fool...
You can emulate PSP basically on anything anyway.
In other news, people have resumed buying a steam deck - which is built for gaming and accidentally emulation
@Sil_Am
And I'd really recommend everyone to have a go at 'Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast' too, it's awesome!!!
(Of course you own the original game).
Back to being useless then.
Yet Sony still won't fix the stuttering issue even though the cause is widely known.
I’ve seen zero improvement in video quality which has always been top notch. Makes me wonder people who have been suffering what’s the cause?
@GigaGaia I’ve played Cyberpunk, Doom Eternal and Hades with no stutter (PS5 LAN connected to router and on 5Ghz separate channel).
Which games cause you stutter?
@sonicmeerkat Pretty sure I think there was news a while ago about PS4 or 5 and someone did report it. There was reports in 2022 you could try looking at. I think the Flow was mentioned then too if I remember correctly.
I did a quick search as I thought it was around that long ago and seems so though heard it from youtubers but the articles from sources should still be enough.
I swear the Flow has either helped with the Vita homebrew scene (or some others systems) or reported some PS4/5 exploits. It depends from case by case I think. I only hear the news from time to time.
The Google engineer thing to me seems like either people making some connections or like Modern Vintage Gamer in the emulation scene. Some just get hired by their skills and use them for good. Not that they ever did for piracy ever. But just knew their way around hardware, emulation, homebrew in the past.
Maybe they were just that good when it came to the hacker events (is a thing I've heard something of with web browsers or other software for hackers to try and break them and the staff take that on board in future updates)/reporting exploits they got hired which maybe happens I have no idea.
Not all hackers are bad or the terms gets through around when they are just good programmers than hackers in the bad meaning of the term. Or just hacking in a certain sense and it's probably just some trick as I've heard hack used.
While disappointing to see the possibility go away as well it's not like people didn't want more from the Portal it makes sense and had to be patched. The Portal wasn't intended for it. Sony wants it the way it is intended. It makes sense.
Unless users prevent it and keep the device offline which may be tricky if they have forced updates to it.
Still for what hardware is offered anything with a bit of internal, screen processing and more can be possible. If people can put Doom on so many things what's to say other things can't on any other screen with enough hardware with or without modification.
People may have or may not have the HipGear screen controller. Not just say an iQue N64 (compared to fan made console reworked handhelds for handhelds Wiis for example) and added a screen to it if possible with another power and cabling to make it possible and where the connections are on the boards.
Without the modding an SD card or whatever else. Whatever sideloading too they could have done with the customised Android environment it had the Portal with that 6GB internal for image processing, updates/fixes and more Sony needed it to have.
People may find a way in still from some other software/hardware side of things but the thing is because it's a wireless device it makes things tricky when it comes to updates rather than an offline device. Or whatever encryption/methods Google/Sony have in place.
Give that google dev some virtue signaling points! Funny coming from a company that made its money off of covert actions by being invasive with everyone’s data.
You can use PPSSPP on the Steam Deck if I recall correctly. Just saying...
I don't get the appeal to Portal at all but hey I'm not one to tell people what to do with their money. If you get enjoyment from it so be it, it's just I have devices that can do everything the Portal can do but better plus I game on Steam Deck (LCD and OLED) along with ROG Ally too so I simply have no need for this thing.
@Vaako007 Beat me to it.
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