Hacking the PSP Blog

More Blue PSP Pictures

Freestyle-psphacker sent me a couple more pictures of the blue PSP, including one of the value pack contents. Thanks Freestyle!

Ars Technica picks best three game console designs

After some heated discussion and debate on the Ars Technica forums, Ben Kuchera has produced three picks for the best use of design in video game consoles. Here's some of what he had to say:

I was flipping through our forums when I found this thread talking about the design of all the different gaming systems, and of course an argument ensued about which ones were the most attractive. I decided to weigh in with what I consider to the be the three best console designs, and to head off another argument, I'm not going to put them in order.

First, I'm going to say that the 360 design bores me; the PS3 looks like a grill; the SNES was boxy and ugly; the DS looked like a makeup compact; and the DS Lite looks like it held more expensive makeup. The GameCube? It's a purple purse, for the love of Gygax! Even the black design or silver edition to come later didn't really save it. Console design, in my opinion, rarely produces anything that looks good. I LOVE the design of the PSP but it almost works against the system: it looks expensive, intimidating, and badass. Many people I show the system to are almost afraid to touch it; it's not that inviting. So what stands out?

Ben Kuchera
January 22, 2007

View the three picks here...

Source: Ars Technica

GPS Receiver (Japan) Review

Gamebrink has posted a review of the Japanese Sony GPS receiver using Deniska's Map This! homebrew application. Since the reviewer wasn't located in Japan, they weren't able to try out the bundled Maplus: Portable Navi software. From the article:

So is it really worth the $69.95 to import this thing? To put it simply, only get it if you live in Japan or have a homebrew capable PSP. Even then the Map This! software isn’t nearly as user friendly or complete as Maplus so it’s probably a better option to just buy a phone or some other piece of hardware with a GPS and mapping software. Then again after looking up what other GPS devices the homebrew supports on eBay, it’s actually not worth it at all. You can get a Holux GPSlim236 for a whopping $9.99 when I searched so unless you live in Japan or really want a Sony themed GPS then skip this until it’s released in your region with the appropriate software.

Read the full review here...

Source: Gamebrink

PSP: rated M for Mature

This should come as no surprise to PSP owners, but it's interesting to see the numbers nonetheless. When looking through the ESRB database, one sees that the PSP offers a greater variety of games than Nintendo's handheld. The PSP features 30 titles with an M rating. The DS, on the other hand, only has 2.

Teen-rated games also find their home on the PSP. The DS only has 31 Teen-rated games, while the PSP has three times the number of titles, with 96 T-rated games.

While it's undeniable that the DS is selling better than the PSP, one has to wonder how many of those consoles are for adults. I'd assume not too many. Grand Theft Auto sold over a million copies on Sony's handheld, while LocoRoco went by mostly unnoticed. I think it should be pretty clear that the two portables are targeting two very different markets: and older gamers, like myself, enjoy the slightly more adult-themed games of the PSP.

Andrew Yoon
January 23, 2007

Source: PSP Fanboy

Off topic: Web-Based Media Converter

Media-Convert is a free, web-based tool for converting documents/text, archives (zip, rar, ace, etc), videos, and sounds (including mobile phone ringtones) to other formats. You can provide either the path to a file stored locally or a URL. Simply specify a file, select the input format (if auto-detection does not work), select an output format, accept the terms of use and click "Convert." The site contains a complete list of all supported file formats. Check it out for yourself at www.media-convert.com.