This “First” PS5 Homebrew looks more and more like an actual game

Scene Developer LightningMods has published some update video on his efforts to run homebrew on the PS5, in what turns out to be an actual tetris implementation. This looks very simple for now, as the developers are still figuring out the various libraries of the platform, but the video implies that basic rendering and controls are working. The hacker hasn’t shared any release plan yet.

PS5 Homebrew – Current status

LightningMods has shared today a pretty exciting video of what his Tetris homebrew game currently looks like on the PS5

https://t.co/L7L4TZOXYp pic.twitter.com/P0VB6n1OjY

— LM (@LightningMods_) September 1, 2023

LibHijacker is the scene’s current best hope to get a Homebrew Loader on the PS5, and as I understand it, LighningMods is building on top of that tool to create his homebrew.

LibHijacker has been making significant progress on a daily basis (two weeks ago the tool could load homebrew, now it can – to some extent – actually run them), although I am not sure how much of LightningMod’s work is in that codebase (he has committed a few changes to the tool’s github) versus how much is still private at the moment.

Just a few days ago, the “game” looked like it had significant rendering issues, so clearly LM has unlocked something here:

the state of LightningMod’s “tetris” game less than a week ago

Downloads

As a reminder, you need a hacked PS5 to run all these tools.

LightningMods hasn’t shared his homebrew Tetris game publicly yet, however some of his work can be found in Libhijacker’s codebase here. For those interested to dive deeper into this, I have a tutorial here on how to compile PS5 payloads such as Libhijacker.

Note: “First” Homebrew here in quotes because the line that defines actual homebrew can be blurry, so this is a matter of opinion. Arguably, something the FTP payload is considered homebrew too… But since here we’re talking about an ELF being loaded, supporting rendering, and gamepad controls, I feel this is closer to what can be considered a “first” homebrew, than payloads we have seen so far.