While Nintendo continues its legal battle against those who create chips to modify its console, the scene community continues to advance little by little. Nintendo Switch has already shown enough capabilities when it comes to emulating other platforms using RetroArch —and Super Mario 3D All- Stars—, but what not many expected is that Nintendo’s hybrid console would be close to being able to run Nintendo Switch games PS Vita natively .
PS Vita could get a second chance with vita2hos
The PS Vita was a great handheld, but it wasn’t as successful as Sony had hoped. Because of that, the console ended up dying prematurely, and we all ended up thinking that mobile phones would eventually eat up that market from the PS Vita and the Nintendo 3DS. However, it did not end up being that way. Nintendo Switch would end up working and its formula has already been copied by other manufacturers.
Now, the future of PS Vita could be related to that of Nintendo Switch. A Spanish developer, Sergi Granell, better known as Xerpi , has created a tool that allows you to run native PS Vita software on the Switch . And no, it is not an emulator, but programs in their native language. This is because the Vita has a 32-bit ARM v7 processor, while the Switch has an Nvidia SoC with 64-bit ARM v8 architecture inside. This means that the Nintendo console can read the Vita’s programs in legacy mode (that is, in 32-bit compatibility mode) without problems, and it only requires a tool that translates the Vita’s instructions.
That’s what vita2hos does, a layer that bridges the programming of the PS Vita and the Horizon OS system of Nintendo Switch.
Will we see PS Vita games on Nintendo Switch?
Possibly, although Xerpi considers that there is a lot of work to be done . So far, the programmer has managed to get the Switch to start basic Vita Homebrew apps. To achieve this, he has needed more than a year and a half to reverse engineer Nintendo to create his program.