Franken-switch
Tech-savvy Switch players can, apparently, now play PS Vita games on their Nintendo Switch consoles, and all without the use of an emulator.
But how?
Homebrew developer, Sergi ‘Xerpi” Granell, has released vita2hos on GitHub, along with an explanation as to what it does, and by the sounds of it, it’s pure witchcraft.
Rather than installing an emulator with variable performance and emulation accuracy, users can use vita2hos to run PS Vita applications natively on Nintendo Switch hardware. This means you’ll be able to load up your favorite Vita games and run them as if they were any other game. Because of the similar ARM architecture, the vita2hos layer “tricks” the Switch into treating PS Vita executables like a normal game. Here’s an explanation is taken from the vita2hos GitHub page:
PlayStation Vita (ARMv7 CPU) executables can be run natively on Nintendo Switch ARMv8 CPU in 32-bit execution mode. When loading a PlayStation Vita executable, vita2hos redirects the module imports of said executable to jump to routines that implement the same behavior, by using native Horizon OS services, like the one exposed by the original PlayStation Vita OS modules.
– Xerpi, GitHub
So if you have the itch to play some PS Vita games but don’t want to pay through the nose for a PS Vita that’s in decent condition, this could be a viable option, providing you have the technical know-how. I’ll just stick to playing Uncharted: Golden Abyss on my 10-year old PS Vita, thank you very much.