I haven’t touched the PSP scene in some while, but I’ve just got more interested. Apparently Sony is coming out with a new model (pictured above), with a lot of cool hardware changes. They actually almost complete my old wishlist!

• Ditch the UMD drive. UMDs are hard to carry around and take a lot of space. Sony could replace the UMD drive with other additions that I will mention below.
• Built-in camera. With a built-in camera one could use the PSP to take pictures. The PSP screen is quite large can could provide great previews.
• Built-in microphone. With Skype integration, PSP could become a great cellphone. The only problem would be that it is a bit large. (Ok, there is one in PSP-3000)
• Bluetooth. I just love Bluetooth enabled devices. They are easy to connect with the computer and you do not have to carry around any cables.
• E-Mail and RSS Newsfeed client. Both are already available as homebrew applications.

Of course, my wishlist grew after I got my iPod Touch. Right now, I think it would be nice if PSP got a touch screen. It would make typing words much easier and is a very natural way to control some games. Another wish is to be able to play homebrew games out of the box. The new PSP has already an internal drive, so this seems like a good idea. Sony does not have to allow low level languages (C/C++) with access to low level features of the hardware, which can be used to play pirated games. Something like a Python interpreter or even LUA Script would be very nice!

As for the games coming out for it, there are some great titles:

• Gran Turismo PSP
• LittleBigPlanet PSP
• Jak & Daxter
• Metal Gear Solid

I’ve played older version of 3/4 of the games, and they were all pretty good. I might actually buy PSP Go, as long as someone figures out a way to put custom firmware on it or have some way to play homebrew games.

FYI, EuroGamer has a nice collection of  pictures of the PSP Go.

There is an interesting article over at the TorrentFreak blog about PSP and piracy. According to the big boys at Sony (John Keller, head of SCEA’s hardware marketing, to be more specific), the rate of pirating PSP games is going down and the reason for this is the PSP users are standing up for Sony and not helping or teaching new PSP owners how to play downloaded ISO games. Since that is not an easy task in itself, most are deterred and instead buy their own games.

My thoughts on this are that this is not correct. I’ve been quite active in many of the PSP fan forums in the past, so I know what the general feeling on piracy is. And yes, it is as described by John Keller. However, my evidence for it is based on the PSP forum posts one to two years ago. Thus if it had anything to do with the decrease in PSP piracy, the decrease wouldn’t be happening just now. I tend to agree with the comments in the MTV Multiplayer article; there have been no new interesting releases in a long time (yes, I’ve been watching) and so there is really no reason to pirate new games.

Do you remember that human game commercial from a few days ago? Well, there is a demo available for it now that you can download from the PSP Fanboy blog. It gives you a taste of navigating in Escher space in a few simple maps. Sadly it does not yet allow you to physically walk in the game, but then it is just a demo.

Ever wondered what one of the weird Japanese PSP puzzle games would look like if it was played in real life? Well, the commercial for EchoChrome tries to demonstrate that…

This was originally supposed to be a tutorial on how to install a full featured portal on your PSP and how you can use it to play simple Flash games even on the official PSP firmware. But I did not find out until the after I finished writing the installation/usage instructions that the portal that I chose as my example was still at a very early stage in the development, and did not haveany games. Nevertheless, I think the portal is still very cool and good looking so I decided to publish the tutorial anyways. In the future look forward to a better tutorial coverting a more advanced portal, like littevish’s Galaxy portal.

The portal that I will be covering in this tutorial is Mac OS X Leopard 0.2 by the Dolphin Projects team. You can download it from its official website or from the urPSP homebrew database. It mimics the looks of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, but if you are not a Apple fanboy, you should also check out urPSP’s portal section to see other choices.

Requirements
The requirements are very simple, and almost every PSP should meet them.

• Firmware version 3.00 or above. It can be a custom edition or the official Sony firmware.
• A memory stick with at least 128MB of free space
• The Mac OS X Leopard Portal 0.2 ZIP archive

Installation Instructions

1. Connect your PSP to your computer and set it into the USB mode.
2. Unpack the archive and look inside the MacOSXLeopard-0.2 folder. Inside of it you will find another folder called Mac OS X Leopard. I suggest renaming it to something simpler to type using the crappy PSP on screen keyboard, for example MacOSX.
3. Copy the newly renamed MacOSX folder onto the root of your memory stick and disconnect your PSP from the computer.
4. That is it, you now have the Mac OS X Leopard PSP Portal installed. Read on to see how to use it!

Usage Instructions

1. Start up the Internet Browser from the XMB menu.
2. Select the File menu and click Address Entry
   
3. Enter in the URL exactly as follows: file:/MacOSX/index.html and hit Start.
   
4. You should see the create user page as pictured above. Enter in a username and password that you want to use in the future. Hit the create button to continue.
5. You will now see the login page. Before you continue, make sure to bookmark this page! This way you won’t have to type in the full URL again to access it.
6. Enter in the username and password you just crated and hit the Log in button.
7. 
   You finally have a Mac OS X desktop on your PSP. Feel free to explore it and see if you find any useful applications. This portal is still fairly new, so there is not much to do yet. I suggest that you subscribe to the package feed on the urPSP website to have updates delivered directly to your mailbox or news reader!

Yesterday I blogged about one of the speculated designs for the rumoured PlayStation Portable cell phone, and my conclusion was that it wouldn’t fly because of the placement of the buttons. That got me thinking, how would I design a PSP Phone? After a short while, I came up with a simple answer of a doable design; a combination of PSP, iPhone and a bit of sliding. I’ll start with the requirements I think it has to fulfill, and then describe my design and how it fulfills them it in the rest of this post. Sadly due to my low artistic skill, I am not able to provide a graphical mock-up. However you are free to sketch it out yourself and publish it on a forum.

First of all, we should look at the physical requirements and constraints of a PSP Phone.

1. Has to be portable. Cell phones have to be small and possible to fit into a pocket, so the surface area will limit the size of the screen and the buttons. Most likely the UMD drive will have to be ditched too.
2. Has to look professional. You wouldn’t carry around that looks like a child’s toy, would you?
3. Has to be durable. The unit will be under a lot of physical stress during gaming, and it has to vistand.
4. Has to be playable. A PSP Phone should have a focus on game playing, because without it, it would just be a normal phone.

Of course we will have to sacrifice some needs to full fill others. For example, the small size means that the buttons will be much smaller and closer together. Also the screen will be much smaller, but I think that will still be able to get a lot out of it.

Let’s start by defining the game playing functionality, for which we’ll need a screen and the normal PSP buttons. I think that the screen should cover the entire front side of the phone. Why? Well, that way we would get the maximum screen side available. Now we need to add the buttons somewhere, and for that I would propose the idea that has been suggested by spiritofcat in the comments of another mockup. Why not have the buttons slide out from the side when you want to play a game? That will fulfill two of the requirements: portability and professionalism. With the buttons hidden, your cell phone will not look like a gaming device and you will be able to use it in serious places without being embarrassed. Also with the buttons nicely tucked away inside, they do not take any extra space.

The next part is to position the dailing buttons, after all it is a cell phone. We cannot hide them inside the unit as in the last design, because the space is now taken up by the gaming buttons. So we could take a leaf out of Apple’s book and copy the iPhone by making the screen a touchscreen. Not only this would allow for better cell phone interface and a keyboard, but also better games.

You might be also wondering why not also place the gaming buttons onto the touch screen. Well, I have two reasons why that would be a good idea. (1) The buttons would take up valuable screen estate, so one might as well make the screen smaller and use normal buttons on the side. (2) It wouldn’t be very durable, and thus fail the third requirement. A gamer usually hits the buttons fast and hard, something that I would not want try on a touch screen.

That in short is my design. I think it is quite ideal for both a mobile phone and a gaming device. It is comfortable to play with, professional looking and very portable. So what do you think?

The above is a mock-up of the future PSP Phone published in a magazine quite some time ago. Please note that the mock-up does not come from Sony, so it does not in any way resemble the actual design of the phone. However it is still quite interesting to see what different people hope for. I am always happy to post about those dream designs and offer my views on them.

As for this particular design, I do not think that it will be good for games due to the difference in height of the buttons. I think the gaming buttons should be always at the same level for optimum gaming performance, because it just makes it easier to hold the PSP and mash them quickly. Since playability is very important for a gaming phone, this is a big problem. I think it can be fixed just with rearranging some of the features of the phone, but more on that later.

Also the buttons seem to be very close together, but that might just be due to the scale of the image. This does not seem to be avoidable in a PSP/phone combination, because cell phones are traditionally small. While I agree that we will definitely loose some comfort from it, it is just a compromise for a small and highly-portable unit.

Other than that, I think the design is quite sleek and pretty. However due to the first problem stated above, I think the design will just not work.

It seems that the famous PSP homebrew developer Dark_Alex has been quite busy over the last week, because he has released several improvements for his custom firmware. First of all, he released a new patch for his 3.90 M33 firmware that increases the speed with which plugins are being loaded and started the integration of Time Machine, anambitious project to run 1.50 kernel code on the Slim PSPs. You can install the update only if you are running 3.90M33 already by using the Network Updater or downloading the 3.90 M33-2 patch from urPSP. Otherwise you will need to install the base 3.90 M33 firmware..

Another update is the 8GB memory fix that should fix the problems some of you have been having with 8GB Sony Pro Duo memory sticks. It is still in the early stages of development, so there are many limitations to it. For example, you need to have it plugged in at all times and you have to apply the patch manually by editing the flash0 memory, a very dangerous process! If you feel like you’re up to it, you can find the latest version here.

And the last, but not the least, improvement is for PSP Fat owners only. Some of you might have noticed lag during games due to slow memory stick access with 3.80 M33 and 3.90 M33. Dark_Alex thinks he found the problem to be with  updated code in the firmwares and decided to port some code from 3.71 M33 to fix it. You can download the patch along with the installer here to speed up your game playing experience on 3.80 M33 and 3.90M33. Many people on forums say it solved their problems!

It seems that there is some really good news for PSP users. Even though the free wireless internet from T-Mobile promotion is ending soon, it does not matter. T-Mobile is being replaced at all StarBucks locations by a free service from AT&T, which basically there will be free wireless almost everywhere in America. Oh yeah, and it is not limited to PSP owners only! I hope this comes to Canada soon too.