7/1/2005

We don’t want to encourage anyone to steal nor cheat, nor copy illegally. This is not about piracy really, but rather about the size of the developpers community gathering around the PSP. It is almost like Sony wants this to happen, to boost the sales of the device and win the Nintendo DS vs PSP war.

There is a theory out there that one reason of the success of the original PlayStation was that CDs were easily copied. This seems to apply again to the PSP and the use of MemoryStick to copy games and movies and everything. Sony makes money when a blank CDR is sold, and the same applies to MemorySticks too…

Anyway, there are a lot of articles out there about what is happening, and if you are into what is already possible or not, it is amazing to see what people are doing with their PSP a few months after it was released.

PSP Launcher released for Lumines
So the PSP Launcher for running homebrew code on your PSP has been out for a couple of weeks, and now the commercial cat appears to be out of the bag.

Latest PSP firmware apparently cracked
A video file released to a Web site for PlayStation Portable independent developers, appears to show an independently developed “Hello, World” test application running from memory stick, on a newer model PSP with firmware version 1.5.

KXploit (Direct Loader!) v1.50 RELEASED!
As promised once again by the PSP-Dev Team; they’ve now released their non-swap 1.50 homebrew loader entitled KXploit!
This method DOES NOT require you to swap memory sticks.

HomebrewPSP Converter
RnSKSoftronics, the makers of iPSP, have put together a Mac program capable of getting all these homebrew games working on your PSP without having to swap memory sticks: HomebrewPSP Converter. It is free.

xmame for PSP
Arcade emulator for the PSP :)
Only works with Omega Fighter at this time. Left and Right on Dpad is OK :)
(The SlashDot post)

Game Boy Advance emulator for PSP
Next on the block just so happens to be a Game Boy Advance emulator. Sure, it won’t play roms larger than 16MB, but damn if every time a new emu comes out it isn’t a Nintendo console generation more advanced than the last.

PSP UAE v0.1 released
A port of the UAE Amiga Emulator for PSP! It runs at about 75-80% of a real Amiga 500 speed, but some games are definitely playable such as E-Motion and Rick Dangerous. The source code is included, and future versions may include such features as a menu, sound, disk selection, and keyboard emulation.

Oh, and in case you were wondering if you can get into trouble when buying a PSP overseas, don’t worry: apparently not. According to Engadget, Sony is going after the grey market resellers, not the buyers.

Sony is expressly denying the rumors that they’re pressing those online retailers to give them their customer data so they can find out who exactly who has bought one.

Again, it is Sony’s best interest that a few get the device before everyone else, and make street-level viral marketing buzz about how cool it is. Prove me wrong, but I think they would certainly not want this to stop…