You may have already heard about the latest PSP exploit discovered within the classic puzzler Lumines, availing owners of any variety of PSP -- all the way up to its current firmware, 3.50 -- the opportunity to run homebrew, install custom firmware, and generally monkey up Sony's plans to get you to play PSP games on the system over, say, 14-year-old SNES games. Can't stop 'em, Sony -- this is what people want. People want their hardware unlocked, they want emulation of everything up to PSX, and they don't want you steppin' on their toes over it. Proof? Hell, look at Lumines.
Quite a big jump for a launch title. Hey, I'm not saying it wasn't a great game -- it's certainly one of my all-time favorite titles to play on the toilet, that's for certain -- but I can't imagine a nearly 6000% jump just for nostalgia or 'cos word got out that it wasn't half bad.
It's levelled off a bit since then, but still impressive -- the force of a wall of gamers all moving towards emulation and maybe-probably piracy. Well, at least they'll actually play the damn things, now. Go buy Crush, jerks!
[Via PSPFanboy]
Contest:
12:18 PM on 06.25.2007
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i agree with Mxyzptlk; any psp owner that doesn't have this is really missing out.
I don't care for SCE all that much but if it came down to affecting my paycheck I'd be doing the same thing.
If Sony was totally unethical that might have worked.
It's one of the reasons why I got a Wii. Those games are on there and I don't have to worry about buying 1 game that shuts all the exploits down. And they stay mine for the life of the console. (which if Nintendo's track record for supporting the Famicom holds, could be 20+ years in customer service requests)
Besides, if I wanna emulate a NES, SNES, or whatever, I've still got a DS if the mood strikes me.
I actually had to buy my PSP used to make sure I got the older firmware in order to downgrade. It ended up costing as much as a new one once I replaced almost the entire casing because I can't stand minor scratches.
Homebrew on the PSP = win.
since i quit the homebrew has come a long long way. i'll look into this later
But to be honest I agree with Mxyzptlk, shame on people that didn't own the game since launch! I imported my game from Japan before I imported the console :) True story ^^
Well thats obviously a dumb statement, if a simple homebrew test working via a game makes that games sales increase by that much... the fact is, while a lot of homebrew apps are piracy based, theres a alot more that are just small games or useful functions that make the psp better. And, imo, emulating game systems that are simply not in production anymore, and hence cannot make the original maker any money, is not unethical. What sony really needs to do to reduce the popularity of homebrew is to put some useful functions and stuff of their own on the system, and actually get some really awesome games out! It has a few good games on it, but it still doesnt have anything that makes people go 'omg i must have one of these'. Its been what nearly 3 years and it still doesnt have a good rpg on it, for crying out loud!